The Israeli military says it has begun the “preliminary actions” of a planned ground offensive to capture and occupy all of Gaza City and already has a hold on its outskirts.

A military spokesman said troops were already operating in the Zeitoun and Jabalia areas to lay the groundwork for the offensive, which Defence Minister Israel Katz approved on Tuesday and which will be put to the security cabinet later this week.

About 60,000 reservists are being called up for the beginning of September to free up active-duty personnel for the operation.

Hamas has accused Israel of obstructing a ceasefire deal in favour of continuing a “brutal war against innocent civilians”, Reuters news agency reported.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza City are expected to be ordered to evacuate and head to shelters in southern Gaza as preparations for Israel’s takeover plan get under way.

Many of Israel’s allies have condemned its plan, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning on Wednesday that it “can only lead to disaster for both peoples and risks plunging the entire region into a cycle of permanent war”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) meanwhile said further displacement and an intensification of hostilities “risk worsening an already catastrophic situation” for Gaza’s 2.1 million population.

Israel’s government announced its intention to conquer the entire Gaza Strip after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal broke down last month.

Speaking at a televised briefing on Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin said Hamas was “battered and bruised” after 22 months of war.

“We will deepen the damage to Hamas in Gaza City, a stronghold of governmental and military terror for the terrorist organisation,” he added. “We will deepen the damage to the terror infrastructure above and below the ground and sever the population’s dependence on Hamas.”

But Defrin said the IDF was “not waiting” to begin the operation.

“We have begun the preliminary actions, and already now, IDF troops are holding the outskirts of Gaza City.”

Two brigades were operating on the ground in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, where in recent days they had located an underground tunnel that contained weapons, and a third brigade was operating in the Jabalia area, he added.

In order to “minimise harm to civilians,” he said, Gaza City’s civilian population would be warned to evacuate for their safety.

A spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, Mahmoud Bassal, told AFP news agency on Tuesday that the situation was “very dangerous and unbearable” in the city’s Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods.

The agency reported that Israeli strikes and fire had killed 25 people across the territory on Wednesday. They included three children and their parents whose home in the Badr area of Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, was bombed, it said.

Defrin said the IDF was also doing everything possible to prevent harm to the 50 hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Their families have expressed fears that those in Gaza City could be endangered by a ground offensive.

The ICRC warned of a catastrophic situation for both Palestinian civilians and the hostages if military activity in Gaza intensified.

“After months of relentless hostilities and repeated displacement, the people in Gaza are utterly exhausted. What they need is not more pressure, but relief. Not more fear, but a chance to breathe. They must have access to the essentials to live in dignity: food, medical and hygiene supplies, clean water, and safe shelter,” a statement said.

“Any further intensification of military operations will only deepen the suffering, tear more families apart, and threaten an irreversible humanitarian crisis. The lives of hostages may also be put at risk,” it added.

It called for an immediate ceasefire and the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance across Gaza.

Mediators Qatar and Egypt are trying to secure a ceasefire deal and have presented a new proposal for a 60-day truce and the release of around half of the hostages, which Hamas said it had accepted on Monday.

Israel has not yet submitted a formal response, but Israeli officials insisted on Tuesday that they would no longer accept a partial deal and demanded a comprehensive one that would see all the hostages released.

On Wednesday Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of disregarding the mediators’ ceasefire proposal and said he was the “real obstructionist of any agreement”, according to a statement cited by Reuters.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza 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.

At least 62,122 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry. The ministry’s figures are quoted by the UN and others as the most reliable source of statistics available on casualties.

Israel has given final approval for a controversial settlement project that would effectively cut off the occupied West Bank from East Jerusalem and divide the territory in two.

Construction in the E1 area has been frozen for two decades amid fierce international opposition. Critics warn it would put an end to hopes for a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

On Wednesday, a defence ministry committee approved plans for 3,400 homes in E1. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who unveiled them last week, said the idea of a Palestinian state was “being erased”.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the move, saying it was illegal and would “destroy” the prospects for a two-state solution.

It follows declarations by a growing number of countries of their intention to recognise a Palestinian state, which Israel has denounced.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

The settlements are illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice last year.

Successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow. However, expansion has risen sharply since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, as well as the start of the Gaza war, triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

The plans for 3,401 housing units in E1 – which covers about 12 sq km (4.6 sq miles) between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Maale Adumim – were approved by the Civil Administration’s Higher Planning Council.

The defence ministry body also approved 342 units in the new settlement of Asael, a former outpost in the southern West Bank that was built without government authorisation but was made legal under Israeli law in May.

Smotrich, an ultranationalist leader and settler who oversees the Civil Administration, said: “The Palestinian state is being erased from the table, not with slogans but with actions.”

“Every settlement, every neighbourhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”

He also urged Netanyahu to “complete the move” and formally annex the West Bank.

Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, in a move not recognised by the vast majority of the international community.

Opponents of the E1 project have warned that it would effectively block the establishment of a Palestinian state because it would cut off the north of the West Bank from the south, and prevent the development in the centre of a contiguous Palestinian urban area connecting Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now warned: “Under the cover of war, Smotrich and his messianic minority are building a settlement doomed for evacuation in any agreement. E1’s sole aim is to sabotage a political solution and rush toward a binational apartheid state.”

The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank not under full Israeli control, also condemned the approval of the E1 plans.

“This plan will isolate Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, submerge it in massive settlement blocs” and fragment the West Bank “into disconnected enclaves resembling open-air prisons”, the PA’s foreign ministry said.

It also alleged that the approval constituted “official Israeli involvement in the crimes of settlement, annexation, genocide, and forcible displacement” – accusations that Israel has long rejected.

The PA’s foreign ministry appealed for “genuine international action, including sanctions, to compel Israel to halt its colonial schemes (…) and respect the international consensus on resolving the Palestinian question”.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the E1 plans would, if implemented, “would divide a Palestinian state in two, mark a flagrant breach of international law and critically undermine the two-state solution”.

“The Israeli government must reverse this decision,” he added.

King Abdullah II of Jordan also rejected the E1 plans, saying: “The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and comprehensive peace.”

A German government spokesman said settlement construction violated international law and “hinders a negotiated two-state solution and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank”.

There was no immediate comment from the US.

However, when asked by Israel’s Army Radio on Monday about the Trump administration’s stance on E1, ambassador Mike Huckabee said: “Whether or not there should be massive development in E1 is a decision for the government of Israel to make. So we would not try to evaluate the good or the bad of that.”

“As a general rule, it is not a violation of international law. And it is also incumbent on all of us to recognise that Israelis have a right to live in Israel.”

The July 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice said Israel’s “continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and that the country was “under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence… as rapidly as possible”.

Israel’s prime minister said at the time that the court had made a “decision of lies” and insisted that “the Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land”.

Heavy rainfall in India’s financial capital Mumbai has disrupted the lives of millions of people, submerging roads and leading to flight and train cancellations.

Many parts of the city remain inundated in waist-deep water, with videos showing residents swimming through waterlogged roads as garbage gushed out from clogged sewers.

Authorities on Tuesday rescued 600 people who got stuck on an overcrowded monorail system that stopped mid-journey. At least 23 had to be treated for suffocation, officials have said.

Monsoon rains are common in Maharashtra state – where Mumbai is located – around this time of the year.

But the region is experiencing particularly heavy rainfall this time. At least 21 people have died in rain-related accidents across the state this week.

In just four days, Mumbai has seen 800mm of rainfall, according to the India Meteorological Department, which is well above the average rain recorded in August.

India’s weather department has issued a red alert for the city and its neighbouring districts, predicting very heavy rains to continue on Wednesday, but has said the situation would improve later in the week.

Most schools and colleges are shut and some 350 people have been shifted from the city’s low-lying areas to temporary shelters.

Mumbai’s local trains – a lifeline for millions of commuters – have seen heavy disruptions with thousands of people waiting on platforms on Tuesday as services were delayed for hours.

“Trains scheduled for last night have left this morning and those supposed to leave this morning have been delayed to later,” a passenger told news agency ANI.

• Why monsoon rains wreak havoc annually in India’s cities
• India’s ‘Silicon Valley’ flooded after heavy rains

Flight operations to and from the city’s international airport have also taken a hit, with 50 flights reportedly cancelled over the past few days.

“While we want your journey to be as hassle-free as possible, Mother nature has her own plans. With heavy rains expected again in Mumbai, there’s a chance this could lead to air traffic congestion and impact flight operations,” budget carrier IndiGo said on X.

Meanwhile, chaos erupted on Tuesday after a monorail system, which was reportedly full far beyond its capacity, halted mid-track.

A passenger who was on the train told BBC Marathi that with the air-conditioning switched off, passengers tried to open the doors to call for help.

Fire department and police teams had to use cranes to bring stranded passengers down from the elevated tracks.

A preliminary investigation suggested the incident took place due to “overcrowding in the train”, according to reports.

Opposition lawmakers have blamed the government for being ill-prepared to handle the situation.

Aaditya Thackeray of the opposition Shiv Sena (UBT) party said several areas, including Mumbai, were witnessing an “absolute collapse of governance”.

He alleged that the government had done “zero planning” despite red alerts being issued, pointing out that the city’s airport was flooded on Tuesday and new water-logging spots had emerged – particularly around recently built infrastructure.

Several citizens also took to social media, criticising the city’s collapsing infrastructure and poor planning.

Mumbai is one of India’s richest cities, significantly contributing to the country’s GDP, industrial output and trade.

Home to more than 12 million people, it has long attracted migrants from across the country who come in search of better opportunities.

While the city has seen a bevy of infrastructure upgrades in recent years – including coastal roads, sea bridges and a new metro system – experts say investments to improve ageing drainage systems and climate-resilient infrastructure have not kept pace with the growing population.

A traffic accident in western Afghanistan has killed 79 people, including 17 children, most of whom were on a bus carrying Afghan migrants deported from Iran, a Taliban interior ministry spokesperson confirmed to the BBC.

The bus, en route to Kabul, caught fire on Tuesday night after colliding with a truck and motorcycle in Herat province.

Everyone aboard the bus was killed, as well as two people from the other vehicles, Ahmadullah Mottaqi, the Taliban’s director of information and culture in Herat, told BBC Pashto earlier.

In recent months Iran has stepped up its deportations of undocumented Afghan migrants who have fled conflict in their homeland.

“All the passengers were migrants who had boarded the vehicle in Islam Qala,” provincial governor spokesman Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told AFP, referring to a town near the Afghanistan–Iran border.

Herat police said the accident happened because of the bus driver’s “excessive speed and negligence”, AFP reported.

Traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan, where roads have been damaged by decades of conflict and driving regulations are not strongly enforced.

Since the 1970s, millions of Afghans have fled to Iran and Pakistan, with major waves during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.

This has contributed to growing anti-Afghan sentiment in Iran, with refugees facing systemic discrimination.

Iran had previously given a July deadline for undocumented Afghans to depart voluntarily.

But since a brief war with Israel in June, Iranian authorities have forcibly returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, alleging national security concerns – though critics say Tehran may simply be looking for scapegoats for its security failures against Israeli attacks.

More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Some had been in Iran for generations.

Experts warn Afghanistan lacks the capacity to absorb the growing number of nationals forcibly returned to a country under Taliban government. The country is already struggling with a large influx of returnees from Pakistan, which is also forcing hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave.

“The return of so many people is creating an additional strain on already overstretched resources, and this new wave of refugees comes at a time when the Afghanistan is starting to feel the brutal impacts of aid cuts,” said Arshad Malik, country director of Save the Children Afghanistan.

The guns along the forested Thai-Cambodian border have been silent for three weeks now.

But a fierce war of words is still being waged by both countries, as they seek to win international sympathy and shore up public support at home. And a commonly-held view in Thailand is that they are losing.

“The perception is that Cambodia has appeared more agile, more assertive and more media savvy,” said Clare Patchimanon, speaking on the Thai Public Broadcasting System podcast Media Pulse. “Thailand has always been one step behind.”

The century-old border dispute dramatically escalated with a Cambodian rocket barrage into Thailand on the morning of 24 July, followed by Thai air strikes.

Since then an army of Cambodian social media warriors, backed by state-controlled English language media channels, have unleashed a flood of allegations and inflammatory reports, many of which turned out to be false.

They reported that a Thai F16 fighter jet had been shot down, posting images of a plane on fire falling from the sky – it turned out to be from Ukraine. Another unfounded allegation, that Thailand had dropped poison gas, was accompanied by an image of a water bomber dropping pink fire retardant. This was really from a wildfire in California.

Thailand responded with official statements of its own, but often these were just dry presentations of statistics, and they came from multiple sources – the military, local government, health ministry, foreign ministry – which did not always appear to be coordinating with each other.

Bangkok failed to get across its argument that Cambodia, whose rockets marked the first use of artillery and had killed several Thai civilians, was responsible for the escalation.

It is no secret that the elected Thai government, centred on the Pheu Thai party of controversial billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, has an uneasy relationship with the Thai military.

That was made much worse in June when Hun Sen, the former Cambodian leader and an old friend of Thaksin’s, decided to leak a private phone conversation he had with Thaksin’s daughter, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra. She had appealed to him to help resolve their differences over the border, and complained that the Thai army general commanding forces there was opposing her.

The leak caused a political uproar in Thailand, prompting the constitutional court to suspend her, and badly weakening the government just as the border crisis escalated.

Hun Sen has no such difficulties. Technically he has handed power to his son, Hun Manet, but after running the country for nearly 40 years it is clear he still holds the reins.

The army, the ruling party and the media are firmly under his control. His motives for burning his friendship with the Shinawatras are unclear, but it seems he was preparing for a larger conflict over the border.

From the start Hun Sen posted constantly, in Khmer and English, on his Facebook page, taunting the Thai government, along with photos that showed him in army uniform or poring over military maps.

By contrast the most visible figure on the Thai side has been the mercurial 2nd Army commander Lt. Gen Boonsin Padklang. He is the same officer Paetongtarn had complained about, and his bellicose nationalism has won him plenty of fans in Thailand but has also undermined the government’s authority.

“Hun Sen is very smart,” says Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia, a definitive account of the way his leadership has shaped the country.

“He has used this asymmetrical tactic of widening the divisions that already exist in Thailand. And the fact that Cambodia is so good at playing the victim has given it another powerful weapon against Thailand in the international arena.”

Thai officials admit they are struggling to counter the tactics used by the Cambodian side.

“This is totally different from how information wars have been waged before,” Russ Jalichandra, vice-minister for foreign affairs, told the BBC.

“What we are saying must be credible and able to be proved. That’s the only weapon we can use to fight in this war. And we have to stick to that even though it seems sometimes we are not fast enough.”

Thailand has always insisted its border dispute with Cambodia should be resolved bilaterally, without outside intervention, using a Joint Boundary Commission the two countries established 25 years ago.

But Cambodia wants to internationalise the dispute. It was the first to refer the escalating conflict to the UN Security Council last month. It has also asked the International Court of Justice to rule on where the border should lie. This has presented Thailand with a dilemma.

The official reason Thailand gives for rejecting ICJ involvement is that like many other countries it does not recognise ICJ jurisdiction. But just as important is a Thai collective memory of loss and humiliation at the ICJ which cuts to the heart of the border dispute.

Both Thailand and Cambodia have enshrined national stories of unjust territorial losses.

In Cambodia’s case it is the story of a once powerful empire reduced to poverty by war and revolution, and at the mercy of the territorial ambitions of its larger neighbours.

Thailand’s is a more recent story of being forced to sacrifice territories in the early 20th Century to stave off French or British colonial rule. When Thailand agreed to a new border with French-occupied Cambodia, it allowed French cartographers to draw the map.

But when Cambodia became an independent state in 1953, Thai forces occupied a spectacular Khmer temple called Preah Vihear, or Khao Phra Viharn in Thai, perched on a cliff top which was supposed to mark the border.

The Thais argued that the French cartographers had erred in moving the border away from the watershed, the agreed dividing line, putting the temple in Cambodia.

Cambodia took the dispute to the ICJ, and won.

The court ruled that, whatever the map’s flaws, Thailand had failed to challenge them in the preceding half century.

The then-Thai military ruler was shocked by the outcome, and wanted to attack Cambodia, but was persuaded by his diplomats to grudgingly accept the verdict.

Thailand’s sensitivity over its 1962 loss now makes it politically impossible for it to accept an ICJ role in resolving the remaining border disputes.

That has allowed Hun Sen to portray Thailand as defying international law.

Thailand is now countering the Cambodian narrative with a more effective one of its own: the use of landmines.

Both countries are signatories to the Ottawa Convention banning the use of anti-personnel mines, and Cambodia has a traumatic legacy of being one of the most mined countries in the world, for which it has received a lot of overseas funding.

So Thailand’s accusation that Cambodian soldiers have been laying new anti-personnel mines along the border, causing multiple injuries to Thai soldiers, is an awkward one for the government in Phnom Penh.

Initially Cambodia dismissed the allegation, saying these were old mines left from the civil war in the 1980s. The Thai government then took a group of diplomats and journalists to the border to show us what they have found.

Laid out on a table in the jungle, just a few hundred metres from the border, was a collection of munitions that Thai demining teams say they recovered from areas formerly occupied by Cambodian troops.

We were confined to a small clearing, marked off by red and white tape. Anywhere beyond that, they said, was unsafe. On the drive in along a muddy track we saw Thai soldiers in camouflaged bunkers hidden in the trees.

Among the munitions were dozens of thick, green plastic discs about the diameter of a saucer. These were Russian-made PMN-2 mines which contain a large quantity of explosives – enough to cause severe limb damage – and are difficult to deactivate. Some appeared to be brand new, and had not been laid.

The initial images of these prompted Cambodia to dismiss the Thai claims as unfounded because the arming pins had not been removed.

However, we were shown other mines which had been armed and buried, but clearly recently – not in the 1980s.

Thailand is calling for action against Cambodia by other signatories to the Ottawa Convention, and is asking countries which support demining programmes in Cambodia to stop funding them.

It argues that Cambodia’s refusal to admit laying mines or to agree on a plan to remove them demonstrates a lack of good faith in resolving the border dispute.

Cambodia has fired back by accusing Thailand of using cluster munitions and white phosphorus shells, which are not banned but can also pose a threat to non-combatants; the Thai military has acknowledged using them but only, it says, against military targets.

Cambodia has also published pictures of what it says is damage to the Preah Vihear temple, a World Heritage Site, by Thai shelling, something that the Thai military has denied.

The incessant volleys of accusations from both countries make any progress on their border dispute unlikely.

Hun Sen and his son have benefited politically from being able to depict themselves as defenders of Cambodian soil, but the conflict has made the political challenges faced by the Thai government even worse.

It has stirred intense animosity between Thai and Cambodian nationalists. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian migrant workers have left Thailand, which will hit an already struggling Cambodian economy.

“Both sides are describing the border as a sacred dividing line between their countries”, says Mr Strangio. “The symbolism is hugely important. This cuts to very deep questions of national identity, and it’s something that neither side can afford to take a step back from at the moment.”

Chinese scientists are in a battle to save one of the last large animal species living in the Yangtze River – and a complete ban on fishing in the region is helping them.

At the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan, just 5km (3.1 miles) from the banks of the river, the preserved bodies of the now-extinct river dolphin (baiji in Chinese) and paddle fish sit silently behind panes of glass.

“Now that those have become extinct, we’re going to save the Yangtze river porpoise,” Professor Wang Xi tells the BBC. “It has become the most important animal here.”

It was in 2002 that the last known baiji died, 22 years after researchers at the Institute started caring for it. A year later, the last known paddle fish – a type of ray-finned fish which can grow to more than 3 metres – was accidentally caught by fishermen and, despite being radio tagged and released, disappeared.

The goal now is to stop the Yangtze finless river porpoise – 1,200 of which remain in the wild, according to current estimates – from suffering the same fate.

“It’s the only top-level predator left in the river,” Professor Wang explains. “They are rare and their numbers reflect the health of the entire system’s ecology.”

The idea of a halt on all fishing was first conceived by Professor Cao Wenxuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2006, but it took a lot more pressure from fellow scientists before a full 10-year-ban finally came into force nearly five years ago.

Enforced by police, the ban carries potential prison time for those caught fishing right along the Yangtze, as well as adjacent lakes and tributaries. It’s been hugely disruptive, and put 220,000 fishermen out of work.

Yet the finless porpoise, which belongs to the oldest living branch of the porpoise family tree, remains critically endangered today.

Those the BBC was shown at the Institute are being held in captivity to be studied by CAS. They can be seen from above the water or below, after taking the stairs down beside a deep tank where the observation area is located.

The scientists say they get excited in the company of humans, and they certainly appear to be showing off: racing through the water and swimming at speed, close to the glass with people on the other side. Swimming past, they seem to look at you with a mischievous smile.

In the wild, they are still hanging on where other species could not.

The construction of the main part of Three Gorges Dam in 2006 didn’t directly impact the finless porpoise, which don’t have to go upstream to spawn, although it did affect the fish they eat.

For other large marine animals, like the paddle fish or the Chinese sturgeon, the structure was catastrophic.

Wang Ding, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), who specialises in cetaceans like the finless porpoise, has dedicated his life to preserving the health of the Yangtze. He can see the good and the bad with these dams – and recalls how things used to be.

“Every flood season we’d have to organise a team with strong muscles, using many men, to go to sleep on the bank of the river, just in case a flood came,” he says. “Then, if the flood hit, everyone would do their best to try to keep the levy banks solid, to make sure they were not broken by the dangerous rushing water.”

Now, he says, the Three Gorges Dam mitigates against the flooding.

As Professor Wang points out, however, this massive, river-blocking structure also prevents the Yangtze’s giant sturgeons from reaching their spawning grounds.

While the endangered fish had briefly seemed to find an alternative location, he says, this is no longer the case – and these days sturgeons are only in the river because researchers are pouring them in, 10,000 at a time.

Despite over a million captive-bred sturgeon being released into the Yangtze last year, attempts to boost the population have been unsuccessful, as the fish are not reproducing by themselves in the wild.

So the finless porpoise doesn’t end up like this, Professor Wang and other scientists are hoping that the current complete fishing ban will continue after the initial 10 years is up.

Their research, published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, records a drastic increase in fish numbers since the ban came into effect in 2021.

Another threat to the finless porpoise, however, might be harder to resolve.

Wang Xi pointed out that “ships are very dangerous for animal’s brains because they are very noisy”.

This is said to produce a form of underwater noise pollution which distresses the animals.

Chinese scientists think that the sound from ships may have contributed to the demise of the Yangtze’s baiji river dolphins, which used sonar to communicate.

But it’s one thing to ban fishing – it would be quite another to completely stop the busy river traffic which delivers passengers as well as goods, and provides lifeblood for much of central China’s economy.

More achievable was forcing factories which produce chemicals to move away from the Yangtze. Thousands of these have been shut down or relocated over the past decade, in a move that is said to have significantly improved the river’s water quality.

There has also been community involvement in the porpoise preservation push.

After retirement, Yang He took up amateur photography. Now, he says, he goes to the river every day with his camera equipment trying to spot the animals.

When he gets some good shots he forwards them to the scientists, who say he’s doing a better job than almost anyone tracking their progress.

Mr Yang says he once saw a porpoise in distress which had been caught in some netting. He notified the local authorities, who shut down that section of river to all shipping until it could be rescued – and it turned out the soon-to-be freed porpoise was pregnant. He felt pretty good about that, he says.

It is the porpoise numbers, however, that tell the most convincing story.

In the 1990s there were 3,300 finless porpoises in the wild. By 2006 this had halved.

Then the fishing bans came in, the factories were moved and the decline stopped. Not only that, but over the last five years of records, porpoise numbers have gone up by nearly a quarter.

Scientists are proud of these numbers – and the implications they hold for the health of the environment more broadly.

“We’re saving the finless porpoise to save the Yangtze River,” says Wang Ding. “This is like a great mirror, to have an idea how well we have been doing protecting this ecosystem.

“If the porpoises are doing fine, if their numbers are increasing, this means the ecological health of the whole river is also improving.”

Texas legislators have approved new congressional maps meant to give Republicans an edge in next year’s elections for the US House of Representatives.

After a two-week standoff, where Democrats fled the state to stall the vote and rally supporters against the redistricting plans, Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives passed the new voting lines in an 88 – 52 vote.

The maps will now go to the Texas Senate, where they are expected to be swiftly approved.

The new maps are intended give Republicans five seats that are currently held by Democrats and shore up the party’s US House majority. However, Democrat-led states are pushing to redraw their maps to offset those gains.

President Donald Trump backed redrawing the maps to safeguard a Republican majority in the US House, when congressional lawmakers will again be on the ballot in 2026.

The vote followed a dramatic showdown between Republicans leaders and Democrats who fled and drew national attention to the redistricting push.

At least two-thirds of the 150-member state legislative body in Texas must be present to proceed with the vote, called a quorum. It became unreachable in the Texas House of Representatives after Democrats fled.

Texas Gov Greg Abbott issued arrest warrants for members of the group and multiple Democrats said law enforcement had been monitoring their homes while they were gone.

The lawmakers returned this week, saying they believed their stalling helped garner widespread awareness of the redistricting plans and caused multiple states to mull their own plans to counter Republicans.

In an effort to ensure Democrats would not attempt to halt the vote again, Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows on Monday ordered the house chamber doors be locked.

He also said Democrats would be “released into the custody” of a designated officer to ensure they return to the statehouse on Wednesday for the redistricting vote.

Several Democrats instead ripped up the written agreements that they were required to sign for the police escort. One lawmaker, state Rep Nicole Collier elected to sleep in the house chamber instead of being escorted by an officer.

In the time since Texas started mulling these new voting maps, other states controlled by both political parties – including Florida, New York, Ohio and Missouri – have been mulling political changes to their voting maps.

California lawmakers are currently debating new maps that would give new advantages to Democrats in five districts, which would cancel out changes made in Texas.

A key provision in California says the changed maps would only go into effect if Texas or other states went ahead with changes favouring Republicans.

The changed maps in Texas sparked concerns about gerrymandering – the redrawing of electoral boundaries to favour a political party – which is legal unless it is racially motivated.

Like other states, Texas typically redraws congressional districts once a decade when new population data is released by the US Census.

Texas Democrats contend that redrawing the maps before the next census count in 2030 is being done along racial lines – an argument that has been rejected by Republicans. Voting maps that were approved in 2021 after the last population count are currently being litigated over allegations of racial discrimination.

A Chinese national has been sentenced to eight years in prison for smuggling firearms and other military items to North Korea, the US justice department has said.

Shenghua Wen, 42, received around $2m (£1.5m) from North Korean officials to ship the items from California, according to a statement from the agency on Monday.

A resident of Ontario, California, Wen has been detained since December 2024. He pleaded guilty in June to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and being an illegal agent of a foreign government.

Wen’s case shines a light on the various ways in which North Korea circumvents international sanctions on its arms trade.

Describing Wen as an “illegal alien”, the justice department said he entered the US on a student visa in 2012 and remained in the country after his visa expired in December 2013.

“Prior to entering the United States, Wen met with officials from North Korea’s government at a North Korean embassy in China,” the agency said. “These government officials directed Wen to procure goods on behalf of North Korea.”

Two North Korean officials reached Wen via an online messaging platform in 2022 and told him to smuggle firearms and other goods from the US to North Korea, according to the justice department.

In 2023, he shipped at least three containers of firearms from the Port of Long Beach to China, with their final destination being North Korea. He filed false export information about the container’s contents.

One such container, which he had reported as carrying a refrigerator, arrived in Hong Kong in January 2024 before being sent to Nampo, North Korea.

He also purchased a firearms business in Houston with money from a North Korean contact, and drove the weapons from Texas to California, where they were arranged to be shipped.

Last September, Wen bought around 60,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition with plans to ship them to North Korea.

US authorities also said that Wen obtained “sensitive technology” which he had meant to send to North Korea, such as a chemical threat identification device and a handheld broadband receiver.

“Wen admitted in his plea agreement that at all relevant times he knew that it was illegal to ship firearms, ammunition, and sensitive technology to North Korea,” the justice department said.

Under sanctions by the UN Security Council, North Korea is banned from trading arms and military equipment. The US has also imposed its own sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile activities.

But North Korea has developed ways to get around the sanctions.

In 2015, the US blacklisted a Singapore-based shipping firm for allegedly supporting illicit arms shipments to North Korea. In 2016, Egyptian authorities intercepted a North Korean ship containing more than 30,000 grenades bound for Egypt.

And in 2023, British American Tobacco had to pay more than $600m (£445m) for selling cigarettes to North Korea in violation of the sanctions.

Actress Aubrey Plaza has said life is “a daily struggle”, seven months after her estranged husband, film-maker Jeff Baena, took his own life.

The writer, director and producer died in January at the age of 47.

Plaza spoke about the aftermath for the first time in an interview on her former Parks and Recreation co-star Amy Poehler’s podcast.

Asked how she was feeling, Plaza said “I think I’m OK” before likening grief to a “giant ocean of awfulness”.

“Sometimes I just want to dive into it and just like be in it,” she said. “Then sometimes I just look at it, and sometimes I try to get away from it. But, it’s always there.”

Plaza and Baena got married in 2021 after working on films including 2014 horror Life After Beth and 2017 historical comedy The Little Hours.

He was found dead at his Los Angeles home in early January.

At the start of their interview on the Good Hang podcast, Poehler asked Plaza how she was.

“Right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you,” she replied.

“Overall, I’m here and I’m functioning. I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think I’m OK, but it’s like a daily struggle, obviously.”

The 41-year-old US actress went on to talk about 2025 movie The Gorge to describe her grief.

That film stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy as two snipers guarding opposite sides of a mysterious deep chasm.

“This is a really dumb analogy and it was kind of a joke at a certain point, but I actually mean it. Did you see that movie The Gorge?” Plaza said.

“In the movie, there’s a cliff on one side and there’s a cliff on the other side, then there’s a gorge in between and it’s filled with all these monster people that are trying to get them.

“I swear when I watched it I was like, that feels like what my grief is like, or what grief could be like. At all times, there’s like a giant ocean of just awfulness that’s right there.”

The couple separated in September 2024, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner Investigator.

Plaza has also starred in TV’s The White Lotus and Marvel series Agatha All Along, and was speaking to promote her new film Honey Don’t!

Baena was best known for writing films like 2004’s I Heart Huckabees, and for writing and directing 2016’s Joshy, 2017’s The Little Hours and 2020’s Horse Girl.

Police in Jeju have for the first time released guidelines reminding foreign visitors to behave or face fines, as the South Korean holiday island sees an increasing number of tourists.

Jeju police issued the guide following complaints from locals over foreigners’ misbehaviour, including littering and letting children defecate on the street.

The guide – printed in Chinese, English and Korean – is the first of its kind in the country, local police say, and comes during the peak summer season.

Jeju, a volcanic island south of the Korean peninsula, is popular for its beaches, walking trails and windswept mountain views. Foreign visitors also come to Jeju for shopping and gambling.

The guide aims to “prevent misunderstandings due to language and cultural differences and improve foreigners’ understanding of Korean culture and laws”, said Jeju Police Agency chief Kim Su-young.

An initial eight thousand copies of the guide will be printed and distributed immediately, Kim said.

The guide lists down “minor offences” that are punishable by fines. These include smoking in prohibited areas, littering, jaywalking, drunk and disorderly behaviour, running away from restaurants without paying for meals, urinating or defecating in public, using a fake ID, and trespassing and breaking into empty houses.

First time violators are let off with with a warning, but repeat offenders could be fined by as much as 200,000 won ($143; £106), according to a copy of the guide released by police.

South Korea has seen a strong post-pandemic rebound in tourism. Jeju alone has welcomed seven million visitors so far this year, according to local media.

In 2024, foreign visitors pumped a record 9.26 trillion won into the local economy. Nearly 70% of these visitors visiting Jeju were from China.

The island’s crackdown on misbehaviour also highlights how tourism hotspots across Asia have been responding to over-tourism.

Last year, a Japanese town blocked a famous roadside view of Mount Fuji to ward off tourists seeking to take pictures and selfies.

Scientists have developed a honeybee “superfood” that could protect the animals against the threats of climate change and habitat loss.

Bee colonies that ate the supplement during trials had up to 15 times more baby bees that grew to adulthood.

Honeybees are a vital part of food production and contribute to pollinating 70% of leading global crops.

“This technological breakthrough provides all the nutrients bees need to survive, meaning we can continue to feed them even when there’s not enough pollen,” senior author Professor Geraldine Wright at the University of Oxford told BBC News.

“It really is a huge accomplishment,” she says.

Honeybees globally are facing severe declines, due to nutrient deficiencies, viral diseases, climate change and other factors. In the US, annual colony losses have ranged between 40-50% in the last decade and are expected to increase.

Beekeepers in the UK have faced serious challenges too.

Nick Mensikov, chair of the Cardiff, Vale and Valleys Beekeepers Association, told BBC News that he lost 75% of his colonies last winter and that this has been seen across South Wales.

“Although the hives have all been full of food, the bees have just dwindled. Most of the bees survived through January, February, and then they just vanished,” he says.

Honeybees feed on pollen and nectar from flowers that contain the nutrients, including lipids called sterols that are necessary for their development.

They make honey in hives, which becomes their food source over winter when flowers have stopped producing pollen.

When beekeepers take out honey to sell, or, increasingly, when there isn’t enough pollen available, they give the insects supplementary food.

But that food is made up of protein flour, sugar and water, and has always lacked the nutrients bees require. It is like humans eating a diet without carbohydrates, amino acids, or other vital nutrients.

Sterol has always proved very difficult to manufacture, but Prof Wright has led a group of scientists for 15 years to identify which exact sterols bees need and how to engineer them.

In the lab at Oxford, PhD student Jennifer Chennells showed us small clear boxes of honeybees in an incubator that she feeds with different foods she has made.

She uses kitchen equipment you could find at home to make the raw ingredients, and rolls out glossy, white tubes of food.

“We put ingredients into what’s like a cookie dough, with different proteins, fats, different amounts of carbohydrate, and the micronutrients that bees need. It’s to try to work out what they like best and what’s best for them,” she says.

She pushes the tubes inside the boxes and bees nibble at the mixture.

It’s in this lab that, using gene editing, Prof Wright’s team successfully made a yeast that can produce the six sterols that bees need.

“It’s a huge breakthrough. When my student was able to engineer the yeast to create the sterols, she sent me a picture of the chromatogram that was a result of the work,” she says, referring to a chart of the substance structure.

“I still have it on the wall of my office,” she explains.

The “superfood” was fed to bees in the lab’s hives for three months.

The results showed that colonies fed the food had up to 15 times more baby bees that made it to adulthood.

“When the bees have a complete nutrition they should be healthier and less susceptible to disease,” Prof Wright says.

Prof Wright says the food would be particularly useful during summers like this one when flowering plants appear to have stopped producing early.

“It’s really important in years when the summer came early and bees will not have sufficient pollen and nectar to make it through the winter,” she says.

“The more months that they go without pollen, the more nutritional stress that they will face, which means that the beekeepers will have greater losses of those bees over winter,” she explains.

Larger-scale trials are now needed to assess the long-term impacts of the food on honeybee health, but the supplement could be available to beekeepers and farmers within two years.

The study was led by University of Oxford, working with Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, University of Greenwich, and the Technical University of Denmark.

The research is published in the journal Nature.

A key takeaway from the summit in Alaska is that Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly wants to freeze the war in Ukraine along its current front line in return for the surrender of the rest of Donetsk region.

Russia holds about 70% of the region (oblast), including the regional capital of the same name, after more than a decade of fighting in which Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk have been the bleeding heart of the conflict.

For Russia to gain all of Donetsk would cement its internationally unrecognised claim to the oblast as well as avoiding further heavy military losses.

For Ukraine to withdraw from western Donetsk would mean the grievous loss not just of land, with the prospect of a new exodus of refugees, but the fall of a bulwark against any future Russian advance.

Here we look at why the territory matters so much.

According to an estimate by Reuters news agency, Ukraine still holds about 6,600 sq km (2,548 sq miles) of territory in Donetsk.

About a quarter of a million people remain there, local officials said recently.

Major urban centres include Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, Kostyantynivka and Druzhkivka.

It forms part of Ukraine’s main industrial region, the Donbas (Donets Basin), though its economy has been devastated by the war.

“The reality is these resources likely will not be able to be accessed for arguably a decade at least because of the [land] mines…” Dr Marnie Howlett, departmental lecturer in Russian and East European Politics at the University of Oxford, told Reuters.

“These lands have been completely destroyed, these cities completely flattened.”

• Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine
• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia
• What security guarantees for Ukraine would actually mean

A recent report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) describes a “fortress belt” running 50km (31 miles) through western Donetsk.

“Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money, and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure,” it writes.

Reports from the region speak of trenches, bunkers, minefields, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.

Russian forces attacking in the direction of Pokrovsk “are engaged in an effort to seize it that would likely take several years to complete”, the ISW argues.

Fortifications are certainly part of the Ukrainian defence but so is the topography.

“The terrain is fairly defensible, particularly the Chasiv Yar height which has been underpinning the Ukrainian line,” Nick Reynolds, Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), tells BBC News.

However, he adds: “If you look at the topography of the Donbas, eastern Ukraine in general, overall the terrain doesn’t really favour the Ukrainians.”

“The city of Donetsk is high ground. It’s all downhill as you go west, which isn’t great for the Ukrainians in terms of running defensive operations.

“That’s not just about drawing in for the close fight or difficulties going up and down hill, a lot of it is also about observation and thus the ability to co-ordinate artillery fires and other forms of fire support without putting drones up.

“Likewise bits of high ground are better for radio wave propagation, better for co-ordination of drones.”

Chasiv Yar, which the Russians recently claimed to have captured, “is one of the last bits of high ground the Ukrainians control”, he says.

Intelligence via satellite imagery, whether provided by Ukraine’s international partners or commercial, is very important, Reynolds notes, “but it is not the same as being able directly to co-ordinate one’s own tactical missions”.

Western Donetsk is just a small part of a front line stretching some 1,100km but it has seen some of the fiercest Russian attacks this summer.

But were Moscow to channel its ground forces in any different direction, it is doubtful whether they would make any better progress.

“In the south, the front line in Zaporizhzhia is now very similar to the one in the Donbas, so that would be just fighting through extensive defensive positions as well,” says Reynolds.

“The Russians face the same problem trying to bash through in the north, so they certainly wouldn’t be pushing on an open door.”

In theory, in the event of a peace deal, the Ukrainians could move their line back further west.

There would, of course, be the issue of unfavourable terrain, and building deep defences would take time, even with the help of civilian contractors not having to work under fire.

But theory is one thing and Rusi’s land warfare research fellow cannot see the Ukrainian military giving up western Donetsk without a fight.

“Even if the Trump administration tries to use ongoing US support or security guarantees as leverage,” Nick Reynolds says, “based on previous Russian behaviour, based on the explicitly transactional approach that the US administration has taken, it is hard to see how the Ukrainian government would want to give up that territory.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his country will reject any Russian proposal to give up the Donbas region in exchange for a ceasefire, arguing that the eastern territory could be used as a springboard for future attacks.

As a journalist in Afghanistan, Abdul says he helped promote American values like democracy and freedom. That work, he said, resulted in him being tortured by the Taliban after the US withdrew from the country in 2021.

Now he’s in California applying for political asylum, amid the looming threat of deportation.

“We trusted those values,” he said. “We came here for safety, and we don’t have it, unfortunately.”

But when Abdul walked into a San Diego court to plead his case, he wasn’t alone.

Ten veterans showed up for his hearing – unarmed, but dressed in hats and shirts to signify their military credentials as a “show of force”, said Shawn VanDiver, a US Navy vet who founded ‘Battle Buddies’ to support Afghan refugees facing deportation.

“Masked agents of the federal government are snatching up our friends, people who took life in our name and have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Approximately 200,000 Afghans relocated to the US after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, as the US left the country in chaos after two decades fighting the war on terror.

Many say they quickly felt embraced by Americans, who recognised the sacrifices they had made to help the US military and fight for human rights.

But since the Trump administration has terminated many of the programmes which protected them from deportation, Afghans now fear they will be deported and returned to their home country, which is now controlled by the Taliban.

Mr VanDiver, who also founded #AfghanEvac in 2021 to help allies escape the Taliban when the US withdrew, said US military veterans owe it to their wartime allies to try and protect them from being swept up in President Trump’s immigration raids.

“This is wrong.”

The Battle Buddies say they have a moral and legal obligation to stand and support Afghans. They now have more than 900 veteran volunteers across the country.

Many of the federal agents working for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are veterans themselves, he said, and the Battle Buddies think their presence alone might help deter agents from detaining a wartime ally.

“Remember, don’t fight ICE,” Mr VanDiver told his fellow Battle Buddies outside court before Abdul’s hearing, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.

“If somebody does fight ICE, capture it on video. Those are the two rules.”

As Abdul and his lawyer went into court, the veterans stood in the corridor outside in a quiet and tense faceoff with half a dozen masked federal agents. It was the same hallway where an Afghan man, Sayed Naser, a translator who says he worked for the US military, was detained 12 June.

“This individual was an important part of our Company commitment to provide the best possible service for our clients, who were the United States Military in Afghanistan,” says one employment document submitted as part of Naser’s asylum application and reviewed by the BBC’s news partner in the US, CBS News.

“I have all the documents,” Mr Naser told the agents as he was handcuffed and taken away, which a bystander captured on video. “I worked with the US military. Just tell them.”

Mr Naser has been in detention since that day, fighting for political asylum from behind bars.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the BBC that there is nothing in his immigration records “indicating that he assisted the US government in any capacity”.

Whichever way Mr Naser’s case is decided, his detention is what inspired veterans to form the Battle Buddies. They say abandoning their wartime allies will hurt US national security because the US will struggle to recruit allies in the future.

“It’s short sighted to think we can do this and not lose our credibility,” said Monique Labarre, a US Army veteran who showed up for Abdul’s hearing. “These people are vetted. They put themselves at substantial risk by supporting the US government.”

President Trump has repeatedly blamed President Biden for a “disgraceful” and “humiliating” retreat from the country.

But the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was initially brokered by President Trump during his first term.

In their wake, American troops left behind a power vacuum that was swiftly and easily filled by the Taliban, who took control of the capital city, Kabul, in August 2021. Afghans, many who worked with the US military and NGOs, frantically swarmed the airport, desperate to get on flights along with thousands of US citizens.

Over the ensuing years, almost 200,000 Afghans would relocate to the US – some under special programmes designed for those most at risk of Taliban retribution.

The Trump administration has since ended one of them called Operation Enduring Welcome. It also ended the temporary protections which shielded some Afghans, as well as asylum seekers from several other countries, from deportation because of security concerns back home.

“Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilising economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement about terminating Temporary Protected Status for Afghans.

She added that some Afghans brought in under these programmes “have been under investigation for fraud and threatening our public safety and national security”.

Afghans in the United States scoff at the suggestion that they’d be safe going back, saying their lives would be in danger.

“I couldn’t work,” said Sofia, an Afghan woman living in Virginia. “My daughters couldn’t go to school.”

With the removal of temporary protected status, the Trump administration could deport people back to Afghanistan. Although that is so far rare, some Afghans have already begun to be deported to third countries, including Panama and Costa Rica.

Sofia and other members of her family were among the thousands of Afghans who received emails in April from the Department of Homeland Security saying: “It is time for you to leave the United States.”

The email, which was sent to people with a variety of different kinds of visas, said their parole would expire in 7 days.

Sofia panicked. Where would she go? She did not leave the United States, and her asylum case is still pending. But the letter sent shockwaves of fear throughout the Afghan community.

When asked about protecting Afghan wartime allies on 30 July, President Trump said: “We know the good ones and we know the ones that maybe aren’t so good, you know some came over that aren’t so good. And we’re going to take care of those people – the ones that did a job.”

Advocates have urged the Trump administration to restore temporary protected status for Afghans, saying women and children could face particular harm under the Taliban-led government.

Advocates are hopeful that Naser will soon be released. They say he passed a “credible fear” screening while in detention, which can allow him to pursue political asylum because he fears persecution or torture if returned to Afghanistan.

The Battle Buddies say they plan to keep showing up for wartime allies at court. It’s not clear if their presence made a difference at Abdul’s hearing – but he wasn’t detained and is now a step closer to the political asylum he says he was promised.

“It’s a relief,” he said outside court while thanking the US veterans for standing with him. But he said he still fears being detained by ICE, and he worries that the US values he believed in, and was tortured for, might be eroded.

“In Afghanistan, we were scared of the Taliban,” he said. “We have the same feeling here from ICE detention.”

Brash, controversial and unafraid to speak his mind, South Africa’s Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie has been swift to call out racism in others but he himself has now been branded a racist – a charge he refutes.

He is often seen as the lightning rod for the frustrations of the country’s coloured community, as people of mixed heritage are referred to in South Africa’s population census.

But old comments McKenzie made on social media, using a profoundly offensive term referring to black people, have created a political storm.

He has until the end of Wednesday to respond to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which wants the minister to delete the offensive posts and issue a public apology, among other demands.

“Coloured” was the classification given to people of mixed heritage under apartheid. This system created a legally enforced racial hierarchy that saw white people at the top and black people at the bottom, with Indians and coloured people in between.

Despite apartheid being abolished three decades ago and the promotion of the “rainbow nation”, its bitter legacy lives on in the country’s economy and politics.

• The ex-gangster who has become South Africa’s sports minister
• Tyla’s racial identity: South African singer sparks culture war

McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance (PA) has attracted support among coloured people, winning parliamentary representation in elections last year.

“For the first time there is coloured people also going to parliament through the Patriotic Alliance,” McKenzie said, after the results were announced.

President Cyril Ramaphosa included the PA in his multi-party coalition government after his African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time.

The ANC sees McKenzie as useful to counter the second-biggest party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), in the campaign for the coloured vote, and to address perceptions of marginalisation within the coloured community.

The group makes up about 8% of South Africa’s population.

The politician has positioned himself as the outspoken defender of their interests.

There is a feeling expressed by some in the community that under apartheid they were not white enough and now in the new era they are not black enough.

This latest row blew up in July after McKenzie took a popular podcast, Open Chats, hosted by a group of young black people, to task for derogatory remarks they made about coloured people.

The clip has since been deleted from the episode, but it did not stop some in the coloured community from going after the show’s hosts over the saga.

A criminal complaint was filed with the police and the matter was referred to the SAHRC for further investigation. The commission’s role is to address human rights violations and seek “effective redress”.

“There should be no place to hide for racists. [Whether] you are a white, black [or] coloured racist, a racist remains a racist,” McKenzie said at the height of his campaign.

But then the social media archaeologists got to work.

In the posts from over a decade ago on what was then known as Twitter, he repeatedly used the highly offensive “K-word” when speaking about black people.

The “K-word” was the most vicious racial slur used to humiliate black people during the apartheid years. It is a symbol of de-humanisation.

McKenzie says he regrets the posts but has also robustly defended himself, most recently in a lengthy live video posted on his Facebook page.

“I always saw myself as black growing up… [so] I’m black and coloured, I’m mixed,” he said looking down the barrel of the camera.

The minister has described himself as a “black-skinned coloured” whose father was a mix of Japanese and Irish and mother is a black woman from the Sotho community.

Because of this, he added, when he speaks of black people he is including himself in the equation.

He also detailed how he had been part of the anti-apartheid struggle.

This reflects the view that as the fight against apartheid gained momentum, coloured people and Indians campaigned with black people against the racist system.

They understood that “if you don’t unite South Africa at a struggle level, your chances of taking over and democratising the country are very limited”, the North West University’s professor of government studies Kedibone Phago said.

But despite the struggle bringing together different groups and then the end of apartheid itself, racial classification has remained embedded in the country.

For the majority of the population, where they live, what kind of job they have, or indeed if they have a job, and their wealth, is still largely related to which apartheid-defined race they belong to.

This is because, among other reasons, the apartheid geography that separated different races “is still very strong”, Prof Phago told the BBC.

“We just don’t know each other at all … [or] each other’s culture and habits [so] when people call us the rainbow nation, it’s just nonsense. Very few people socialise across racial barriers,” Terry Oakley-Smith, who founded the South African diversity consultant firm Diversi-T, said.

The beginning of democracy in 1994 did not wipe out racism, but “what’s unusual about this case is that it’s about a so-called coloured person using that sort of language and remarks”, Ms Oakley-Smith noted.

Both experts also raised concerns how the podcast presenters expressed themselves.

“They were terribly disappointing,” Ms Oakley-Smith said.

• Ghosts of apartheid haunt South Africa as compensation anger brews
• Race in South Africa: ‘We haven’t learnt we are human beings first’

There has been a long-standing feeling in sections of the coloured community that in an effort to tackle the problems from the past, the democratic government has ignored their needs.

McKenzie echoed this in 2023.

“Coloured people woke up in the new South Africa and found legislation that makes it clear that they are not Africans,” he was quoted as saying.

“A clear racist separation by the ANC government. How do you even explain that because coloureds and blacks fought side by side in the struggle for freedom?”

But Prof Phago argued that this is about different communities looking for something to blame for broader problems.

He pointed to the government’s failure to take the lead in the necessary “societal transformation”.

“This is a very strong systemic problem that needs a strong developmental state to deal with because if we don’t find a way… we’ll continue to have these kind of problems.”

Ms Oakley-Smith echoed this, saying that this latest racial storm showed “there’s a lot more that needs to be done to improve race relations”.

“We have so much work to do… [and] unless we take some actions, these things are going to continue,” she noted.

McKenzie’s sports, arts and culture portfolio is supposed to promote things that bring the country together. Ironically, his divisive historical comments and his refusal to apologise has rallied citizens in the call for tougher conversations around race relations.

But he will now have to wait to see what the SAHRC will do next – and whether President Cyril Ramaphosa will keep him in the government.

• Caught in the crossfire – the victims of Cape Town’s gang warfare
• Is there a genocide of white South Africans as Trump claims?
• Do Afrikaners want to take Trump up on his South African refugee offer?

As President Donald Trump tries to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, he has been highlighting his track record in peace negotiations since starting his second term in office.

Speaking at the White House on 18 August, where he was pressed by European leaders to push for a ceasefire, he claimed: “I’ve ended six wars… all of these deals I made without even the mention of the word ‘ceasefire’.”

The following day the number he cited had risen to “seven wars”.

The Trump administration says a Nobel Peace Prize is “well past time” for the “peacemaker-in-chief”, and has listed the “wars” he has supposedly ended.

Some lasted just days – although they were the result of long-standing tensions – and it is unclear whether some of the peace deals will last.

Trump also used the word “ceasefire” a number of times when talking about them on his Truth Social platform.

BBC Verify has taken a closer look at these conflicts and how much credit the president can take for ending them.

The 12-day conflict began when Israel hit targets in Iran on 13 June.

Trump confirmed that he had been informed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the strikes.

The US carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites – a move widely seen as bringing the conflict towards a swift close.

On 23 June, Trump posted: “Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World.”

After the hostilities ended, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted his country had secured a “decisive victory” and did not mention a ceasefire.

Israel has since suggested it could strike Iran again to counter new threats.

“There is no agreement on a permanent peace or on how to monitor Iran’s nuclear programme going forward,” argues Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

“So what we have is more of a de facto ceasefire than an end to war, but I’d give him some credit, as the weakening of Iran by Israel – with US help – has been strategically significant.”

Tensions between these two nuclear-armed countries have existed for years, but in May hostilities broke out following an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir.

After four days of strikes, Trump posted that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE”.

He said this was the result of “a long night of talks mediated by the United States”.

• Kashmir: Why India and Pakistan fight over it

Pakistan thanked Trump and later recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his “decisive diplomatic intervention”.

India, however, played down talk of US involvement: “The talks regarding cessation of military action were held directly between India and Pakistan under the existing channels established between both militaries,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said.

Long-standing hostilities between these two countries flared up after the M23 rebel group seized mineral-rich territory in eastern DR Congo earlier in the year.

In June, the two countries signed a peace agreement in Washington aimed at ending decades of conflict. Trump said it would help increase trade between them and the US.

The text called for “respect for the ceasefire” agreed between Rwanda and DRC in August 2024.

Since the latest deal, both sides have accused each other of violating the ceasefire and the M23 rebels – which the UK and US have linked to Rwanda – have threatened to walk away from peace talks.

In July, the rebel group killed at least 140 people, including women and children, in eastern DR Congo, according to Human Rights Watch.

• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?
• DR Congo rebels killed 140 civilians despite peace process, rights group says

“There’s still fighting between Congo and Rwanda – so that ceasefire has never really held,” says Margaret MacMillan, a professor of history who taught at the University of Oxford.

On 26 July, Trump posted on Truth Social saying: “I am calling the Acting Prime Minister of Thailand, right now, to likewise request a Ceasefire, and END to the War, which is currently raging.”

A couple of days later, the two countries agreed to an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire” after less than a week of fighting at the border.

Malaysia held the peace talks, but President Trump threatened to stop separate negotiations on reducing US tariffs (taxes on imports) unless Thailand and Cambodia stopped fighting.

Both are heavily dependent on exports to the US.

On 7 August, Thailand and Cambodia reached an agreement aimed at reducing tensions along their shared border.

The leaders of both countries said Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in securing a peace deal, which was announced at the White House on 8 August.

“I think he gets good credit here – the Oval Office signing ceremony may have pushed the parties to peace,” says Mr O’Hanlon.

In March, the two governments had said they were ready to end their nearly 40-year conflict centred on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

• Nagorno-Karabakh: Conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenians explained

The most recent, serious outbreak of fighting was in September 2023 when Azerbaijan seized the enclave (where many ethnic Armenians lived).

There was no “war” here for the president to end, but there have long been tensions over a dam on the River Nile.

Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was completed this summer with Egypt arguing that the water it gets from the Nile could be affected.

After 12 years of disagreement, Egypt’s foreign minister said on 29 June that talks with Ethiopia had ground to a halt.

Trump said: “If I were Egypt, I’d want the water in the Nile.” He promised that the US was going to resolve the issue very quickly.

Egypt welcomed Trump’s words, but Ethiopian officials said they risked inflaming tensions.

No formal deal has been reached between Egypt and Ethiopia to resolve their differences.

On 27 June, Trump claimed to have prevented an outbreak of hostilities between them, saying: “Serbia, Kosovo was going to go at it, going to be a big war. I said you go at it, there’s no trade with the United States. They said, well, maybe we won’t go at it.”

The two countries have long been in dispute – a legacy of the Balkan wars of the 1990s – with tensions rising in recent years.

“Serbia and Kosovo haven’t been fighting or firing at each other, so it’s not a war to end,” Prof MacMillan told us.

The White House pointed us towards Trump’s diplomatic efforts in his first term.

The two countries signed economic normalisation agreements in the Oval Office with the president in 2020, but they were not at war at the time.

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“After such a long time, I couldn’t really remember my voice,” Sarah Ezekiel tells BBC Access All. “When I first heard it again, I felt like crying. It’s a kind of miracle.”

The onset of motor neurone disease (MND) left Sarah without a voice and the use of her hands at the age of 34. It was within months of her becoming a mum for the second time.

As they were growing up, her children Aviva and Eric only ever heard her speak through a machine with an emotionless robotic voice.

But 25 years on, artificial intelligence (AI) has recreated their mum’s real voice from just eight seconds of audio on a scratchy VHS tape.

Sarah speaks to the BBC with eye-gaze technology – which uses a camera to track her eyes as she looks at letters on a screen in front of her.

The sound of her younger voice rings out.

The “miracle” Sarah describes began when Bristol-based assistive technology company, Smartbox, asked her for an hour’s worth of audio to recreate her voice.

Sarah and her now-adult children hunted for something suitable – but Sarah had lost her voice in 2000, before mart phones were in wide-use and before social media captured moments.

Eventually, an old VHS tape of Aviva as a baby was found, shot on a family camcorder in the 1990s. But the picture was wobbly and the sound distorted. The people in shot mumbled and were drowned out by a blaring TV.

Barely audible, eight seconds of Sarah’s voice could just about be heard.

Sarah was a vivacious Londoner who had worked as a personal assistant in publishing when life took a turn.

Married with a toddler, the family was expecting a second baby. But Sarah didn’t feel right. Her speech had been slowing and she felt a weakness in her left arm.

Unexpectedly, she was diagnosed with MND, sometimes referred to as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

The degenerative condition causes muscle weakness and, of the 1,000 people diagnosed in the UK each year, the NHS says most will lose the ability to speak.

MND affects men more, and is life-shortening, but it varies from person to person and some people live long lives.

“I was in denial, thinking I’d be fine,” says Sarah, but “after Eric was born, I deteriorated rapidly”.

Within months, Sarah lost the use of her hands, then “all intelligible speech”. Her marriage ended soon after.

“I was very depressed and terrified of disability and death,” she says. With two tiny children to care for, Sarah had to rely on 24-hour care.

“It was difficult to watch strangers care for my kids, but I’m grateful,” says Sarah, sitting with Aviva and Eric.

Unable to move or communicate easily, Sarah battled with isolation. She says the first five years were spent watching bad TV, looking on as her children grew.

Eric, 25, says his only memories are of “mum being paralysed”, while Aviva, 28, recalls the moment she realised her mum was different.

“I just have this memory of asking her to prepare some strawberries, and she wasn’t able to cut them. She had to ask someone.”

Five years after her diagnosis, communication finally opened-up for Sarah, with the advent of eye-gaze technology.

It meant she could build words and sentences with eye-movements – and speak, albeit with a synthetic voice, like the physicist Stephen Hawking.

The technology enabled her to become a volunteer for the MND Association and a patron of the charity Lifelites, which seeks to give children and families tech so they can communicate.

And she returned to her passion, painting, using eye-gaze technology to create original artworks.

“I was so happy, even though it was painstaking and tiring,” she says.

In Bristol, despite having asked for an hour’s worth of audio, Simon Poole from Smartbox says his heart sank when he received only eight seconds from a VHS tape.

“I thought there’s no way we’re going to be able to create a voice using audio that bad,” he says.

But he played around with it nonetheless, looping it through the latest technology from international AI-voice company called ElevenLabs.

The company had announced it wanted to provide free voice-cloning to one million people at risk of losing their speech, through conditions including MND, cancer or stroke, and cloning had worked for rugby player Rob Burrow.

Eventually, Simon managed to set Sarah’s voice apart from the sound of the blaring TV using ElevenLabs Voice Isolator. But the result was thin, devoid of intonation or personality, and it had an American lilt.

So he turned to another app where, using thousands of voices, AI had been trained to fill in gaps left by the isolator and to predict where a voice, like Sarah’s, might go with its intonation.

Eventually, Simon ended up with several audio phrases he was happy with – and sent them to Sarah.

He recalls how she told him that she had almost cried upon first hearing her new, old voice. And that one of Sarah’s old friends, someone who knew what she used to sound like, was “impressed by how realistic it was”.

But how would Aviva and Eric react when they heard it?

“It was amazing,” says Aviva. “I’m still coming to terms with it. Hearing it now in everyday life, it still surprises me.”

Sarah’s new voice has also made the family closer, as Sarah can now express emotions and convey when she is happy, sad or angry. It has “made such a difference,” says Eric.

“We can feel who she is as a person,” Aviva says. “Mum isn’t just a disabled person in the corner with a robot that doesn’t relate to her.”

Voices created by AI are a big improvement on older, computerised ones – or from choosing from libraries of recorded voices – says Dr Susan Oman, a specialist in data, AI and society at Sheffield University.

“It’s about you as an individual, and your connection with who you are,” she says. “If that [the voice] doesn’t feel like you, then you don’t feel like you.”

The preservation of accents is also “really important” at a time when technology could homogenise them, she says.

“It betrays your class. It betrays your origin. All over the world people are trying to reclaim accents and dialects that have been lost.”

Sarah jokes that she sometimes misses her old, synthetic voice. “I was very posh and people didn’t know I was [really a] cockney with a slight lisp.”

But she is happy to have regained her old voice, she says. “I’m glad to be back. It’s better than being a robot.”

You can listen to the episode about Sarah on BBC Access All via BBC Sounds. Subscribe and email your thoughts to accessall@bbc.co.uk

High on a hill in the west of the Afghan capital, Kabul, behind a steel gate topped with barbed wire, lies a place few locals speak of, and even fewer visit.

The women’s wing of a mental health centre run by the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) is the largest of only a handful of facilities in the country dedicated to helping women with mental illnesses.

Locals call it Qala, or the fortress.

The BBC gained exclusive access to the crowded centre where staff find it difficult to cope with the 104 women currently within its walls.

Among them are women like Mariam* who says she is a victim of domestic violence.

Thought to be in her mid-20s, she’s been here for nine years, after enduring what she describes as abuse and neglect by her family, followed by a period of homelessness.

“My brothers used to beat me whenever I visited a neighbour’s house,” she alleges. Her family did not want to let her out of the house alone, she says, because of a cultural belief that young girls should not leave the house without supervision.

Eventually, her brothers appeared to have kicked her out, forcing her to live on the streets at a young age. It was here a woman found her and, apparently concerned about her mental health, brought her to the centre.

Despite her story, Mariam’s smile is constantly radiant. She is often seen singing, and is one of the few patients allowed to work around the building, volunteering to help with cleaning.

She is ready – and willing – to be discharged.

But she cannot leave because she has nowhere to go.

“I don’t expect to return to my father and mother. I want to marry someone here in Kabul, because even if I go back home, they’ll just abandon me again,” Mariam says.

As she can’t return to her abusive family, she is effectively trapped in the facility.

In Afghanistan, strict Taliban regulations and deeply-rooted patriarchal traditions make it nearly impossible for women to live independently. Women are legally and socially required to have a male guardian for travel, work, or even accessing many services, and most economic opportunities are closed to them.

Generations of gender inequality, limited education, and restricted employment have left many women financially dependent on male breadwinners, reinforcing a cycle where survival often hinges on male relatives.

Sat on a bed in one of the dormitories is Habiba.

The 28-year-old says she was brought to the centre by her husband, who was forcing her out of the family home after he married again.

Like Mariam, she now has nowhere else to go. She too is ready to be released, but her husband will not take her back, and her widowed mother cannot support her either.

Her three sons now live with an uncle. They visited her initially, but Habiba hasn’t seen them this year; without access to a phone, she cannot even make contact.

“I want to be reunited with my children,” she says.

Their stories are far from unique at the centre, where our visit, including conversations with staff and patients, is overseen by officials from the Taliban government.

Some patients have been here for 35 to 40 years, says Saleema Halib, a psychotherapist at the centre.

“Some have been completely abandoned by their families. No-one comes to visit, and they end up living and dying here.”

Years of conflict has left its mark on the mental health of many Afghans, especially women, and the issue is often poorly understood and subject to stigma.

In response to a recent UN report on the worsening situation of women’s rights in Afghanistan, Hamdullah Fitrat, Taliban government’s deputy spokesperson, told the BBC that their government did not allow any violence against women and they have “ensured women’s rights in Afghanistan”.

But UN data released in 2024 points to a worsening mental health crisis linked to the Taliban’s crackdown on women’s rights: 68% of women surveyed reported having “bad” or “very bad” mental health.

Services are struggling to cope, both inside and outside the centre, which has seen a several-fold increase in patients over the last four years, and now has a waiting list.

“Mental illness, especially depression, is very common in our society,” says Dr Abdul Wali Utmanzai, a senior psychiatrist at a nearby hospital in Kabul, also run by ARCS.

He says he sees up to 50 outpatients a day from different provinces, most of them women: “They face severe economic pressure. Many have no male relative to provide for them – 80% of my patients are young women with family issues.”

The Taliban government says it is committed to providing health services. But with restrictions on women’s movement without a male chaperon, many cannot seek help.

All of this makes it more difficult for women like Mariam and Habiba to leave – and the longer they stay, the fewer places there are for those who say they desperately need help.

One family had been trying for a year to admit their 16-year-old daughter, Zainab, to the centre, but they were told there were no beds available. She is now one of the youngest patients there.

Until then she had been confined to her home – her ankles shackled to prevent her running away.

It’s not clear what mental health problems Zainab has been experiencing, but she struggles to verbalise her thoughts.

A visibly distressed Feda Mohammad says the police recently found his daughter miles from home.

Zainab had gone missing for days, which is especially dangerous in Afghanistan, where women are not allowed to travel long distances from home without a male guardian.

“She climbs the walls and runs away if we unchain her,” Feda Mohammad explains.

Zainab breaks down into tears every now and then, especially when she sees her mother crying.

Feda Mohammad says they noticed her condition when she was eight. But it worsened after multiple bombings hit her school in April 2022.

“She was thrown against a wall by the blast,” he says. “We helped carry out the wounded and collect the bodies. It was horrific.”

Exactly what would have happened if space hadn’t been found is unclear. Zainab’s father said her repeated attempts to run away were dishonouring him, and he argued it was better for her and her family that she is confined to the centre.

Whether she – like Mariam and Habiba – will now become one of Qala’s abandoned women remains to be seen.

The family of a father who vanished with his three children into New Zealand’s wilderness almost four years ago have pleaded for him to come home.

A national search has been ongoing for Tom Phillips since he took Ember, nine, Maverick, 10, and Jayda, 12, from their family home in December 2021 over what police say was a custody battle.

They were seen in public for the first time since vanishing last October, when a group of teenagers spotted them trekking through the bush and filmed the encounter.

For the first time since their disappearance, Mr Phillips’ family have directly appealed to him, with his mother writing: “Everyday I wake up and hope that today will be the day that you all come home.”

“There’s a lot of love and there’s a lot of support, and we’re ready to help you walk through what you need to walk through,” his sister, Rozzi Phillips, told New Zealand news site Stuff in an exclusive interview.

“I miss you, and I miss being part of your life, and I really want to see you and the kids and be part of your lives again.”

Ms Phillips said her brother was a capable builder who she believed would have built a hut or “nest” in the bush as shelter.

She also provided Stuff with a handwritten note from their mother, Julia, which reads: “Tom – I feel really sad that you thought you had to do this. Not considering how much we love you and can support you. It hurts every time I see photos of the children and of you and see some of your stuff that is still here.”

“Jayda, Maverick, Ember – I love you so much and really miss being part of your lives.”

Police have said they believe Mr Phillips took his children after losing legal custody of them to their mother.

They believe Mr Phillips and his children have been hiding and camping in the North Island’s western Waikato region and last year posted an NZ$80,000 (£37,200) reward for information on their whereabouts.

There have been occasional sightings of the family, including in October when a group of teenage pig hunters who had been trekking through an untamed area of Marokopa – a tiny coastal community where Mr Phillips hails from – spotted them and filmed the encounter on their phones.

In the video, Tom Phillips can be seen leading his children through the rugged terrain. They are all wearing camouflaged clothing.

New Zealand media reported the teenagers had briefly spoken to one of their children – asking if anyone knew they were there. The child had replied “only you” and kept walking, the father of one of the teenagers told New Zealand’s 1News.

The teenagers reported that Mr Phillips had been carrying a gun and had a long beard while the children were masked and carrying their own packs.

New Zealand Police described the sighting as “credible”. That prompted an unsuccessful three-day search involving police and army helicopters.

Last year, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Mr Phillips over his suspected involvement in a bank robbery in Te Kuiti, a small town on the North Island.

Police said he had an accomplice during the alleged incident, and cautioned the public against approaching him as he was probably armed.

Police have said they believe Mr Phillips is being helped in his evasion of the law by other parties.

The entire US-Mexico border wall will be painted black to make it hotter and harder to climb, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said, crediting the idea to Donald Trump.

While domestic detentions and deportations have been the primary focus of the current immigration crackdown, Trump’s policy bill passed earlier this summer also allocated $46m (£34m) for additional wall construction.

About a half mile (0.8km) of wall is going up each day along the nearly 2,000 mile (3,218km) border, according to Noem.

The number of border crossings has plummeted in recent months, and the Trump administration says sweeping arrests and detentions are acting as a deterrent to illegal migration.

Speaking to reporters along a section of the border in New Mexico, Noem said on Tuesday that the black paint was “specifically at the request of the president”.

“[He] understands that in the hot temperatures down here, when something is painted black it gets even warmer and it will make it even harder for people to climb,” she added.

Border Patrol officials also say that black paint will help prevent the wall from rusting.

Additionally, Noem said the administration is planning to install more “waterborne infrastructure” along the Rio Grande, which makes up more than half of the border between the two countries.

While Noem did not provide any more details on those projects, Texas authorities have previously installed floating barriers – large orange buoys – and fortified riverbank fencing guarded by state troopers, local police officers and the Texas National Guard along parts of the river.

Crossings and detentions of undocumented immigrants have plummeted since Trump returned to the office, with record lows of approximately 4,600 in July and 6,000 in June – a 92% year-on-year reduction.

During the Biden administration, detentions sometimes spiked to averages of 6,000 per day.

Earlier in August, Noem said that a total of 1.6m undocumented immigrants have left the US during the first 200 days of the Trump administration, although she did not specify how many have been deported and how many left on their own.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier in August that a total of 300,000 undocumented immigrants had been detained in the interior of the US since January.

While the administration continues to say it is prioritising those with criminal histories, immigration advocates have warned that many with no criminal charges or only minor infractions have been caught up in the sweeps.

White House officials also contend that increased border security and mass deportations have been deterrents, saying they are the primary reason for plummeting figures at the US-Mexico border.

M23 rebels killed at least 140 people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last month in one of the worst atrocities by the armed group since its resurgence in late 2021, Human Rights Watch has said in a report.

This is despite a peace process, brokered by the US and Qatar, to end the conflict in the region.

Witnesses told the advocacy group that the Rwanda-backed rebels “summarily executed” local residents, including women and children, largely from the Hutu ethnic group in the Rutshuru area, near the Virunga National Park.

The rebels have previously strongly denied any role in these killings, calling the charges a “blatant misrepresentation of the facts”.

It did not respond to a request to comment on the report, the rights group said.

The alleged massacre appears to have taken place during an M23 campaign against an armed Hutu group, the FDLR, formed by perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda.

HRW said the total killings in July may exceed 300, corroborating similar findings by the UN earlier this month.

Fighting between government troops and the M23 escalated in January, when the rebels captured large parts of the mineral-rich east, including the regional capital Goma.

Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians forced from their homes in the ongoing conflict, the UN says.

• How Trump wants the US to cash in on mineral-rich DR Congo’s peace deal
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In the report, released on Wednesday, HRW said the M23 used machetes and gunfire to attack people in at least 14 villages and farming areas near the Virunga National Park between 10 and 30 July.

The M23 fighters surrounded and blocked off all roads into the area to prevent people from leaving, witnesses said.

“We woke up on 11 July and [the M23] were there in large numbers.… [T]hey were already on our doorstep.… [T]hey killed people with guns and machetes,” a man said, adding that five members of his family were killed in Katanga area.

A woman who saw M23 fighters kill her husband with a machete on 11 July said that M23 fighters that day rounded up about 70 women and children.

“They told us to sit on the edge of the riverbank, and then they started shooting at us,” the woman was quoted as saying, adding that she survived after falling into the river without being shot.

Another man said that he watched as the rebels killed his wife and four children aged nine months to 10 years from afar, according to the report.

Locals said that M23 fighters told them to immediately bury the bodies in the fields or leave them unburied, preventing families from organising funerals.

“M23 fighters also threw bodies, including of women and children, into the Rutshuru River,” the report added.

Citing 25 witness accounts plus medical workers, military and UN personnel, the report said that members of the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF), were backing the M23 operation.

Earlier this month, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also reported that the RDF had supported the M23 killings of “at least 319 between 9 and 21 July in four villages in Rutshuru”.

Kigali has not responded to the HRW claim, but it has angrily denied the UN accusations, calling them “gratuitous” and “sensational allegations”, saying they risked undermining the peace process, and claiming that an armed group opposed to the M23 carried out the killings.

Rwanda denies persistent and widespread allegations that it provides military support to the M23, which is largely made up of the Tutsi ethnic group that was targeted by Hutu militias in the genocide.

But Kigali does see eastern DR Congo as a security threat, primarily because of the continued existence of the armed Hutu group, the FDLR, which fights alongside the army.

The killings occur amid stalled regional and international peace efforts to end the prolonged deadly conflict, including an agreement between Rwanda and the DR Congo government with provisions for Kinshasa to “neutralise” the FDLR.

Separately in Qatar last month, the M23 and the DR Congo government also signed a ceasefire deal, intended as a step towards a permanent peace.

But last week, as negotiations were set to resume, the M23 walked away from the peace talks. It said Kinshasa had failed to meet commitments outlined in the deal, although it has since announced it will send a “technical team” to Doha to discuss the practical arrangements for the truce.

The Congolese army has also accused the M23 of violating the ceasefire.

HRW has urged the UN Security Council, the European Union, and governments to condemn grave abuses witnessed in east DR Congo, impose further sanctions on those responsible and press for the arrest and appropriate prosecution of commanders implicated in the conflict.

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A former priest accused of abusing members of a “cult-like” church group he led has been found guilty of 17 counts of indecent assault against nine women.

Chris Brain, 68, was head of the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS), an influential evangelical movement based in Sheffield in the 1980s and 90s.

Brain, of Wilmslow, in Cheshire, was convicted of the charges following a trial at Inner London Crown Court.

He was found not guilty of another 15 charges of indecent assault, while jurors are continuing to deliberate on a further four counts of indecent assault and one charge of rape.

Wearing a black suit and black shirt, Brain showed no emotion as the jury foreman delivered the verdicts.

The jury are expected to return to court on Thursday to continue their deliberations on the remaining counts.

During the trial, prosecutor Tim Clark KC said some of the women had been sexually abused after being recruited to a so-called “homebase team” charged with looking after Brain and his family.

He told the court the group became known among NOS members as the “Lycra lovelies” or the “Lycra nuns” after witnesses reported seeing the defendant surrounded by attractive women in lingerie at his home.

The court heard that the women were required to carry out household chores at the home he shared with his wife and daughter, the prosecution said, as well as putting him to bed with sexual favours.

Prosecutors told the jury some of the sexual assaults had taken place during massages Brain admitted to receiving from members of the homebase team.

He told the jury they were intended to be for “tensions” on his body but could evolve into consensual “sensual touching”, which he said was between friends and “no big deal”.

He denies all the charges against him.

The NOS began in Sheffield in 1986 and was initially celebrated by Church of England leaders for its nightclub-style services, which attracted hundreds of young people.

The Church fast-tracked Brain’s ordination as a priest in 1991 due to the success of the NOS, with jurors told the group spent “large sums of money” to obtain robes worn by the actor Robert De Niro in the film The Mission for Brain to wear in his ordination ceremony.

In the early 1990s the NOS moved to the city’s Ponds Forge leisure centre in order to accommodate the growing congregation.

But prosecutors told the jury NOS “became a cult” in which Brain abused his position to sexually assault “a staggering number” of women from his congregation.

The group was dissolved in 1995 when concerns about Brain’s behaviour were first raised.

The jury heard Brain later admitted in a BBC documentary, aired the same year, to having “improper sexual conduct with a number of women”.

He resigned his holy orders two days before the programme was broadcast.

South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds

President Donald Trump’s administration has revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former US officials, accusing them of politicising intelligence for partisan or personal gain.

In a memo posted on social media, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard directed several national security agency heads to immediately strip the officials of their clearances, stating the move was ordered by the president.

The officials include several national security aides who served under former Democratic presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Gabbard offered no evidence to support the accusations in the memo.

Security clearances grant access to sensitive government information, and some former officials retain them to advise successors. Some private sector jobs such as those in defence and aerospace can require access to security clearances as a pre-condition for employment.

It remains unclear whether all 37 individuals listed in the memo still held active clearances.

Gabbard said Trump ordered the revocations because the officials had “abused the public trust by politicizing and manipulating intelligence, leaking classified intelligence without authorization, and or committing intentional egregious violations of tradecraft standards”.

“Being entrusted with a security clearance is a privilege, not a right,” Gabbard wrote on X. “Those in the Intelligence Community who betray their oath to the Constitution and put their own interests ahead of the interests of the American people have broken the sacred trust they promised to uphold.”

The memo did not lay out charges against specific individuals.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has revoked security clearances for intelligence officials.

The administration has previously done the same for Biden, his Vice-President Kamala Harris, and former lawmakers involved in investigations of the US Capitol riot four years ago.

In recent weeks, Gabbard has led the charge against Obama-era intelligence officials who concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, which Trump won.

Trump and Gabbard have described the intelligence community’s assessment as a “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine the president’s electoral success.

Democrats have dismissed the moves as a political distraction, and accused the White House of deflecting attention from unpopular policies and Trump’s alleged ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” a spokesman for Obama said last month.

Gabbard also announced on Wednesday that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) – a key independent agency that assists the DNI – will downsize its workforce by 40% and reduce its annual budget by $700m.

In a statement, she said the agency had become “bloated and inefficient” over the past two decades and was “rife with abuse of power”.

The intelligence community, she said, must make “serious changes” to fulfil its duty and “provide objective, unbiased, timely intelligence”.

The Israeli military says it has begun the “preliminary actions” of a planned ground offensive to capture and occupy all of Gaza City and already has a hold on its outskirts.

A military spokesman said troops were already operating in the Zeitoun and Jabalia areas to lay the groundwork for the offensive, which Defence Minister Israel Katz approved on Tuesday and which will be put to the security cabinet later this week.

About 60,000 reservists are being called up for the beginning of September to free up active-duty personnel for the operation.

Hamas has accused Israel of obstructing a ceasefire deal in favour of continuing a “brutal war against innocent civilians”, Reuters news agency reported.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza City are expected to be ordered to evacuate and head to shelters in southern Gaza as preparations for Israel’s takeover plan get under way.

Many of Israel’s allies have condemned its plan, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning on Wednesday that it “can only lead to disaster for both peoples and risks plunging the entire region into a cycle of permanent war”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) meanwhile said further displacement and an intensification of hostilities “risk worsening an already catastrophic situation” for Gaza’s 2.1 million population.

Israel’s government announced its intention to conquer the entire Gaza Strip after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal broke down last month.

Speaking at a televised briefing on Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin said Hamas was “battered and bruised” after 22 months of war.

“We will deepen the damage to Hamas in Gaza City, a stronghold of governmental and military terror for the terrorist organisation,” he added. “We will deepen the damage to the terror infrastructure above and below the ground and sever the population’s dependence on Hamas.”

But Defrin said the IDF was “not waiting” to begin the operation.

“We have begun the preliminary actions, and already now, IDF troops are holding the outskirts of Gaza City.”

Two brigades were operating on the ground in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, where in recent days they had located an underground tunnel that contained weapons, and a third brigade was operating in the Jabalia area, he added.

In order to “minimise harm to civilians,” he said, Gaza City’s civilian population would be warned to evacuate for their safety.

A spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, Mahmoud Bassal, told AFP news agency on Tuesday that the situation was “very dangerous and unbearable” in the city’s Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods.

The agency reported that Israeli strikes and fire had killed 25 people across the territory on Wednesday. They included three children and their parents whose home in the Badr area of Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, was bombed, it said.

Defrin said the IDF was also doing everything possible to prevent harm to the 50 hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Their families have expressed fears that those in Gaza City could be endangered by a ground offensive.

The ICRC warned of a catastrophic situation for both Palestinian civilians and the hostages if military activity in Gaza intensified.

“After months of relentless hostilities and repeated displacement, the people in Gaza are utterly exhausted. What they need is not more pressure, but relief. Not more fear, but a chance to breathe. They must have access to the essentials to live in dignity: food, medical and hygiene supplies, clean water, and safe shelter,” a statement said.

“Any further intensification of military operations will only deepen the suffering, tear more families apart, and threaten an irreversible humanitarian crisis. The lives of hostages may also be put at risk,” it added.

It called for an immediate ceasefire and the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance across Gaza.

Mediators Qatar and Egypt are trying to secure a ceasefire deal and have presented a new proposal for a 60-day truce and the release of around half of the hostages, which Hamas said it had accepted on Monday.

Israel has not yet submitted a formal response, but Israeli officials insisted on Tuesday that they would no longer accept a partial deal and demanded a comprehensive one that would see all the hostages released.

On Wednesday Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of disregarding the mediators’ ceasefire proposal and said he was the “real obstructionist of any agreement”, according to a statement cited by Reuters.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza 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.

At least 62,122 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry. The ministry’s figures are quoted by the UN and others as the most reliable source of statistics available on casualties.

Texas legislators have approved new congressional maps meant to give Republicans an edge in next year’s elections for the US House of Representatives.

After a two-week standoff, where Democrats fled the state to stall the vote and rally supporters against the redistricting plans, Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives passed the new voting lines in an 88 – 52 vote.

The maps will now go to the Texas Senate, where they are expected to be swiftly approved.

The new maps are intended give Republicans five seats that are currently held by Democrats and shore up the party’s US House majority. However, Democrat-led states are pushing to redraw their maps to offset those gains.

President Donald Trump backed redrawing the maps to safeguard a Republican majority in the US House, when congressional lawmakers will again be on the ballot in 2026.

The vote followed a dramatic showdown between Republicans leaders and Democrats who fled and drew national attention to the redistricting push.

At least two-thirds of the 150-member state legislative body in Texas must be present to proceed with the vote, called a quorum. It became unreachable in the Texas House of Representatives after Democrats fled.

Texas Gov Greg Abbott issued arrest warrants for members of the group and multiple Democrats said law enforcement had been monitoring their homes while they were gone.

The lawmakers returned this week, saying they believed their stalling helped garner widespread awareness of the redistricting plans and caused multiple states to mull their own plans to counter Republicans.

In an effort to ensure Democrats would not attempt to halt the vote again, Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows on Monday ordered the house chamber doors be locked.

He also said Democrats would be “released into the custody” of a designated officer to ensure they return to the statehouse on Wednesday for the redistricting vote.

Several Democrats instead ripped up the written agreements that they were required to sign for the police escort. One lawmaker, state Rep Nicole Collier elected to sleep in the house chamber instead of being escorted by an officer.

In the time since Texas started mulling these new voting maps, other states controlled by both political parties – including Florida, New York, Ohio and Missouri – have been mulling political changes to their voting maps.

California lawmakers are currently debating new maps that would give new advantages to Democrats in five districts, which would cancel out changes made in Texas.

A key provision in California says the changed maps would only go into effect if Texas or other states went ahead with changes favouring Republicans.

The changed maps in Texas sparked concerns about gerrymandering – the redrawing of electoral boundaries to favour a political party – which is legal unless it is racially motivated.

Like other states, Texas typically redraws congressional districts once a decade when new population data is released by the US Census.

Texas Democrats contend that redrawing the maps before the next census count in 2030 is being done along racial lines – an argument that has been rejected by Republicans. Voting maps that were approved in 2021 after the last population count are currently being litigated over allegations of racial discrimination.

As President Donald Trump tries to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, he has been highlighting his track record in peace negotiations since starting his second term in office.

Speaking at the White House on 18 August, where he was pressed by European leaders to push for a ceasefire, he claimed: “I’ve ended six wars… all of these deals I made without even the mention of the word ‘ceasefire’.”

The following day the number he cited had risen to “seven wars”.

The Trump administration says a Nobel Peace Prize is “well past time” for the “peacemaker-in-chief”, and has listed the “wars” he has supposedly ended.

Some lasted just days – although they were the result of long-standing tensions – and it is unclear whether some of the peace deals will last.

Trump also used the word “ceasefire” a number of times when talking about them on his Truth Social platform.

BBC Verify has taken a closer look at these conflicts and how much credit the president can take for ending them.

The 12-day conflict began when Israel hit targets in Iran on 13 June.

Trump confirmed that he had been informed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the strikes.

The US carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites – a move widely seen as bringing the conflict towards a swift close.

On 23 June, Trump posted: “Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World.”

After the hostilities ended, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted his country had secured a “decisive victory” and did not mention a ceasefire.

Israel has since suggested it could strike Iran again to counter new threats.

“There is no agreement on a permanent peace or on how to monitor Iran’s nuclear programme going forward,” argues Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

“So what we have is more of a de facto ceasefire than an end to war, but I’d give him some credit, as the weakening of Iran by Israel – with US help – has been strategically significant.”

Tensions between these two nuclear-armed countries have existed for years, but in May hostilities broke out following an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir.

After four days of strikes, Trump posted that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE”.

He said this was the result of “a long night of talks mediated by the United States”.

• Kashmir: Why India and Pakistan fight over it

Pakistan thanked Trump and later recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his “decisive diplomatic intervention”.

India, however, played down talk of US involvement: “The talks regarding cessation of military action were held directly between India and Pakistan under the existing channels established between both militaries,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said.

Long-standing hostilities between these two countries flared up after the M23 rebel group seized mineral-rich territory in eastern DR Congo earlier in the year.

In June, the two countries signed a peace agreement in Washington aimed at ending decades of conflict. Trump said it would help increase trade between them and the US.

The text called for “respect for the ceasefire” agreed between Rwanda and DRC in August 2024.

Since the latest deal, both sides have accused each other of violating the ceasefire and the M23 rebels – which the UK and US have linked to Rwanda – have threatened to walk away from peace talks.

In July, the rebel group killed at least 140 people, including women and children, in eastern DR Congo, according to Human Rights Watch.

• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?
• DR Congo rebels killed 140 civilians despite peace process, rights group says

“There’s still fighting between Congo and Rwanda – so that ceasefire has never really held,” says Margaret MacMillan, a professor of history who taught at the University of Oxford.

On 26 July, Trump posted on Truth Social saying: “I am calling the Acting Prime Minister of Thailand, right now, to likewise request a Ceasefire, and END to the War, which is currently raging.”

A couple of days later, the two countries agreed to an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire” after less than a week of fighting at the border.

Malaysia held the peace talks, but President Trump threatened to stop separate negotiations on reducing US tariffs (taxes on imports) unless Thailand and Cambodia stopped fighting.

Both are heavily dependent on exports to the US.

On 7 August, Thailand and Cambodia reached an agreement aimed at reducing tensions along their shared border.

The leaders of both countries said Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in securing a peace deal, which was announced at the White House on 8 August.

“I think he gets good credit here – the Oval Office signing ceremony may have pushed the parties to peace,” says Mr O’Hanlon.

In March, the two governments had said they were ready to end their nearly 40-year conflict centred on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

• Nagorno-Karabakh: Conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenians explained

The most recent, serious outbreak of fighting was in September 2023 when Azerbaijan seized the enclave (where many ethnic Armenians lived).

There was no “war” here for the president to end, but there have long been tensions over a dam on the River Nile.

Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was completed this summer with Egypt arguing that the water it gets from the Nile could be affected.

After 12 years of disagreement, Egypt’s foreign minister said on 29 June that talks with Ethiopia had ground to a halt.

Trump said: “If I were Egypt, I’d want the water in the Nile.” He promised that the US was going to resolve the issue very quickly.

Egypt welcomed Trump’s words, but Ethiopian officials said they risked inflaming tensions.

No formal deal has been reached between Egypt and Ethiopia to resolve their differences.

On 27 June, Trump claimed to have prevented an outbreak of hostilities between them, saying: “Serbia, Kosovo was going to go at it, going to be a big war. I said you go at it, there’s no trade with the United States. They said, well, maybe we won’t go at it.”

The two countries have long been in dispute – a legacy of the Balkan wars of the 1990s – with tensions rising in recent years.

“Serbia and Kosovo haven’t been fighting or firing at each other, so it’s not a war to end,” Prof MacMillan told us.

The White House pointed us towards Trump’s diplomatic efforts in his first term.

The two countries signed economic normalisation agreements in the Oval Office with the president in 2020, but they were not at war at the time.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Israel has given final approval for a controversial settlement project that would effectively cut off the occupied West Bank from East Jerusalem and divide the territory in two.

Construction in the E1 area has been frozen for two decades amid fierce international opposition. Critics warn it would put an end to hopes for a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

On Wednesday, a defence ministry committee approved plans for 3,400 homes in E1. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who unveiled them last week, said the idea of a Palestinian state was “being erased”.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the move, saying it was illegal and would “destroy” the prospects for a two-state solution.

It follows declarations by a growing number of countries of their intention to recognise a Palestinian state, which Israel has denounced.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

The settlements are illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice last year.

Successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow. However, expansion has risen sharply since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, as well as the start of the Gaza war, triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

The plans for 3,401 housing units in E1 – which covers about 12 sq km (4.6 sq miles) between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Maale Adumim – were approved by the Civil Administration’s Higher Planning Council.

The defence ministry body also approved 342 units in the new settlement of Asael, a former outpost in the southern West Bank that was built without government authorisation but was made legal under Israeli law in May.

Smotrich, an ultranationalist leader and settler who oversees the Civil Administration, said: “The Palestinian state is being erased from the table, not with slogans but with actions.”

“Every settlement, every neighbourhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”

He also urged Netanyahu to “complete the move” and formally annex the West Bank.

Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, in a move not recognised by the vast majority of the international community.

Opponents of the E1 project have warned that it would effectively block the establishment of a Palestinian state because it would cut off the north of the West Bank from the south, and prevent the development in the centre of a contiguous Palestinian urban area connecting Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now warned: “Under the cover of war, Smotrich and his messianic minority are building a settlement doomed for evacuation in any agreement. E1’s sole aim is to sabotage a political solution and rush toward a binational apartheid state.”

The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank not under full Israeli control, also condemned the approval of the E1 plans.

“This plan will isolate Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, submerge it in massive settlement blocs” and fragment the West Bank “into disconnected enclaves resembling open-air prisons”, the PA’s foreign ministry said.

It also alleged that the approval constituted “official Israeli involvement in the crimes of settlement, annexation, genocide, and forcible displacement” – accusations that Israel has long rejected.

The PA’s foreign ministry appealed for “genuine international action, including sanctions, to compel Israel to halt its colonial schemes (…) and respect the international consensus on resolving the Palestinian question”.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the E1 plans would, if implemented, “would divide a Palestinian state in two, mark a flagrant breach of international law and critically undermine the two-state solution”.

“The Israeli government must reverse this decision,” he added.

King Abdullah II of Jordan also rejected the E1 plans, saying: “The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and comprehensive peace.”

A German government spokesman said settlement construction violated international law and “hinders a negotiated two-state solution and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank”.

There was no immediate comment from the US.

However, when asked by Israel’s Army Radio on Monday about the Trump administration’s stance on E1, ambassador Mike Huckabee said: “Whether or not there should be massive development in E1 is a decision for the government of Israel to make. So we would not try to evaluate the good or the bad of that.”

“As a general rule, it is not a violation of international law. And it is also incumbent on all of us to recognise that Israelis have a right to live in Israel.”

The July 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice said Israel’s “continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and that the country was “under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence… as rapidly as possible”.

Israel’s prime minister said at the time that the court had made a “decision of lies” and insisted that “the Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land”.

A key takeaway from the summit in Alaska is that Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly wants to freeze the war in Ukraine along its current front line in return for the surrender of the rest of Donetsk region.

Russia holds about 70% of the region (oblast), including the regional capital of the same name, after more than a decade of fighting in which Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk have been the bleeding heart of the conflict.

For Russia to gain all of Donetsk would cement its internationally unrecognised claim to the oblast as well as avoiding further heavy military losses.

For Ukraine to withdraw from western Donetsk would mean the grievous loss not just of land, with the prospect of a new exodus of refugees, but the fall of a bulwark against any future Russian advance.

Here we look at why the territory matters so much.

According to an estimate by Reuters news agency, Ukraine still holds about 6,600 sq km (2,548 sq miles) of territory in Donetsk.

About a quarter of a million people remain there, local officials said recently.

Major urban centres include Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, Kostyantynivka and Druzhkivka.

It forms part of Ukraine’s main industrial region, the Donbas (Donets Basin), though its economy has been devastated by the war.

“The reality is these resources likely will not be able to be accessed for arguably a decade at least because of the [land] mines…” Dr Marnie Howlett, departmental lecturer in Russian and East European Politics at the University of Oxford, told Reuters.

“These lands have been completely destroyed, these cities completely flattened.”

• Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine
• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia
• What security guarantees for Ukraine would actually mean

A recent report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) describes a “fortress belt” running 50km (31 miles) through western Donetsk.

“Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money, and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure,” it writes.

Reports from the region speak of trenches, bunkers, minefields, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.

Russian forces attacking in the direction of Pokrovsk “are engaged in an effort to seize it that would likely take several years to complete”, the ISW argues.

Fortifications are certainly part of the Ukrainian defence but so is the topography.

“The terrain is fairly defensible, particularly the Chasiv Yar height which has been underpinning the Ukrainian line,” Nick Reynolds, Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), tells BBC News.

However, he adds: “If you look at the topography of the Donbas, eastern Ukraine in general, overall the terrain doesn’t really favour the Ukrainians.”

“The city of Donetsk is high ground. It’s all downhill as you go west, which isn’t great for the Ukrainians in terms of running defensive operations.

“That’s not just about drawing in for the close fight or difficulties going up and down hill, a lot of it is also about observation and thus the ability to co-ordinate artillery fires and other forms of fire support without putting drones up.

“Likewise bits of high ground are better for radio wave propagation, better for co-ordination of drones.”

Chasiv Yar, which the Russians recently claimed to have captured, “is one of the last bits of high ground the Ukrainians control”, he says.

Intelligence via satellite imagery, whether provided by Ukraine’s international partners or commercial, is very important, Reynolds notes, “but it is not the same as being able directly to co-ordinate one’s own tactical missions”.

Western Donetsk is just a small part of a front line stretching some 1,100km but it has seen some of the fiercest Russian attacks this summer.

But were Moscow to channel its ground forces in any different direction, it is doubtful whether they would make any better progress.

“In the south, the front line in Zaporizhzhia is now very similar to the one in the Donbas, so that would be just fighting through extensive defensive positions as well,” says Reynolds.

“The Russians face the same problem trying to bash through in the north, so they certainly wouldn’t be pushing on an open door.”

In theory, in the event of a peace deal, the Ukrainians could move their line back further west.

There would, of course, be the issue of unfavourable terrain, and building deep defences would take time, even with the help of civilian contractors not having to work under fire.

But theory is one thing and Rusi’s land warfare research fellow cannot see the Ukrainian military giving up western Donetsk without a fight.

“Even if the Trump administration tries to use ongoing US support or security guarantees as leverage,” Nick Reynolds says, “based on previous Russian behaviour, based on the explicitly transactional approach that the US administration has taken, it is hard to see how the Ukrainian government would want to give up that territory.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his country will reject any Russian proposal to give up the Donbas region in exchange for a ceasefire, arguing that the eastern territory could be used as a springboard for future attacks.

Police in Jeju have for the first time released guidelines reminding foreign visitors to behave or face fines, as the South Korean holiday island sees an increasing number of tourists.

Jeju police issued the guide following complaints from locals over foreigners’ misbehaviour, including littering and letting children defecate on the street.

The guide – printed in Chinese, English and Korean – is the first of its kind in the country, local police say, and comes during the peak summer season.

Jeju, a volcanic island south of the Korean peninsula, is popular for its beaches, walking trails and windswept mountain views. Foreign visitors also come to Jeju for shopping and gambling.

The guide aims to “prevent misunderstandings due to language and cultural differences and improve foreigners’ understanding of Korean culture and laws”, said Jeju Police Agency chief Kim Su-young.

An initial eight thousand copies of the guide will be printed and distributed immediately, Kim said.

The guide lists down “minor offences” that are punishable by fines. These include smoking in prohibited areas, littering, jaywalking, drunk and disorderly behaviour, running away from restaurants without paying for meals, urinating or defecating in public, using a fake ID, and trespassing and breaking into empty houses.

First time violators are let off with with a warning, but repeat offenders could be fined by as much as 200,000 won ($143; £106), according to a copy of the guide released by police.

South Korea has seen a strong post-pandemic rebound in tourism. Jeju alone has welcomed seven million visitors so far this year, according to local media.

In 2024, foreign visitors pumped a record 9.26 trillion won into the local economy. Nearly 70% of these visitors visiting Jeju were from China.

The island’s crackdown on misbehaviour also highlights how tourism hotspots across Asia have been responding to over-tourism.

Last year, a Japanese town blocked a famous roadside view of Mount Fuji to ward off tourists seeking to take pictures and selfies.

Scientists have developed a honeybee “superfood” that could protect the animals against the threats of climate change and habitat loss.

Bee colonies that ate the supplement during trials had up to 15 times more baby bees that grew to adulthood.

Honeybees are a vital part of food production and contribute to pollinating 70% of leading global crops.

“This technological breakthrough provides all the nutrients bees need to survive, meaning we can continue to feed them even when there’s not enough pollen,” senior author Professor Geraldine Wright at the University of Oxford told BBC News.

“It really is a huge accomplishment,” she says.

Honeybees globally are facing severe declines, due to nutrient deficiencies, viral diseases, climate change and other factors. In the US, annual colony losses have ranged between 40-50% in the last decade and are expected to increase.

Beekeepers in the UK have faced serious challenges too.

Nick Mensikov, chair of the Cardiff, Vale and Valleys Beekeepers Association, told BBC News that he lost 75% of his colonies last winter and that this has been seen across South Wales.

“Although the hives have all been full of food, the bees have just dwindled. Most of the bees survived through January, February, and then they just vanished,” he says.

Honeybees feed on pollen and nectar from flowers that contain the nutrients, including lipids called sterols that are necessary for their development.

They make honey in hives, which becomes their food source over winter when flowers have stopped producing pollen.

When beekeepers take out honey to sell, or, increasingly, when there isn’t enough pollen available, they give the insects supplementary food.

But that food is made up of protein flour, sugar and water, and has always lacked the nutrients bees require. It is like humans eating a diet without carbohydrates, amino acids, or other vital nutrients.

Sterol has always proved very difficult to manufacture, but Prof Wright has led a group of scientists for 15 years to identify which exact sterols bees need and how to engineer them.

In the lab at Oxford, PhD student Jennifer Chennells showed us small clear boxes of honeybees in an incubator that she feeds with different foods she has made.

She uses kitchen equipment you could find at home to make the raw ingredients, and rolls out glossy, white tubes of food.

“We put ingredients into what’s like a cookie dough, with different proteins, fats, different amounts of carbohydrate, and the micronutrients that bees need. It’s to try to work out what they like best and what’s best for them,” she says.

She pushes the tubes inside the boxes and bees nibble at the mixture.

It’s in this lab that, using gene editing, Prof Wright’s team successfully made a yeast that can produce the six sterols that bees need.

“It’s a huge breakthrough. When my student was able to engineer the yeast to create the sterols, she sent me a picture of the chromatogram that was a result of the work,” she says, referring to a chart of the substance structure.

“I still have it on the wall of my office,” she explains.

The “superfood” was fed to bees in the lab’s hives for three months.

The results showed that colonies fed the food had up to 15 times more baby bees that made it to adulthood.

“When the bees have a complete nutrition they should be healthier and less susceptible to disease,” Prof Wright says.

Prof Wright says the food would be particularly useful during summers like this one when flowering plants appear to have stopped producing early.

“It’s really important in years when the summer came early and bees will not have sufficient pollen and nectar to make it through the winter,” she says.

“The more months that they go without pollen, the more nutritional stress that they will face, which means that the beekeepers will have greater losses of those bees over winter,” she explains.

Larger-scale trials are now needed to assess the long-term impacts of the food on honeybee health, but the supplement could be available to beekeepers and farmers within two years.

The study was led by University of Oxford, working with Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, University of Greenwich, and the Technical University of Denmark.

The research is published in the journal Nature.

The guns along the forested Thai-Cambodian border have been silent for three weeks now.

But a fierce war of words is still being waged by both countries, as they seek to win international sympathy and shore up public support at home. And a commonly-held view in Thailand is that they are losing.

“The perception is that Cambodia has appeared more agile, more assertive and more media savvy,” said Clare Patchimanon, speaking on the Thai Public Broadcasting System podcast Media Pulse. “Thailand has always been one step behind.”

The century-old border dispute dramatically escalated with a Cambodian rocket barrage into Thailand on the morning of 24 July, followed by Thai air strikes.

Since then an army of Cambodian social media warriors, backed by state-controlled English language media channels, have unleashed a flood of allegations and inflammatory reports, many of which turned out to be false.

They reported that a Thai F16 fighter jet had been shot down, posting images of a plane on fire falling from the sky – it turned out to be from Ukraine. Another unfounded allegation, that Thailand had dropped poison gas, was accompanied by an image of a water bomber dropping pink fire retardant. This was really from a wildfire in California.

Thailand responded with official statements of its own, but often these were just dry presentations of statistics, and they came from multiple sources – the military, local government, health ministry, foreign ministry – which did not always appear to be coordinating with each other.

Bangkok failed to get across its argument that Cambodia, whose rockets marked the first use of artillery and had killed several Thai civilians, was responsible for the escalation.

It is no secret that the elected Thai government, centred on the Pheu Thai party of controversial billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, has an uneasy relationship with the Thai military.

That was made much worse in June when Hun Sen, the former Cambodian leader and an old friend of Thaksin’s, decided to leak a private phone conversation he had with Thaksin’s daughter, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra. She had appealed to him to help resolve their differences over the border, and complained that the Thai army general commanding forces there was opposing her.

The leak caused a political uproar in Thailand, prompting the constitutional court to suspend her, and badly weakening the government just as the border crisis escalated.

Hun Sen has no such difficulties. Technically he has handed power to his son, Hun Manet, but after running the country for nearly 40 years it is clear he still holds the reins.

The army, the ruling party and the media are firmly under his control. His motives for burning his friendship with the Shinawatras are unclear, but it seems he was preparing for a larger conflict over the border.

From the start Hun Sen posted constantly, in Khmer and English, on his Facebook page, taunting the Thai government, along with photos that showed him in army uniform or poring over military maps.

By contrast the most visible figure on the Thai side has been the mercurial 2nd Army commander Lt. Gen Boonsin Padklang. He is the same officer Paetongtarn had complained about, and his bellicose nationalism has won him plenty of fans in Thailand but has also undermined the government’s authority.

“Hun Sen is very smart,” says Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia, a definitive account of the way his leadership has shaped the country.

“He has used this asymmetrical tactic of widening the divisions that already exist in Thailand. And the fact that Cambodia is so good at playing the victim has given it another powerful weapon against Thailand in the international arena.”

Thai officials admit they are struggling to counter the tactics used by the Cambodian side.

“This is totally different from how information wars have been waged before,” Russ Jalichandra, vice-minister for foreign affairs, told the BBC.

“What we are saying must be credible and able to be proved. That’s the only weapon we can use to fight in this war. And we have to stick to that even though it seems sometimes we are not fast enough.”

Thailand has always insisted its border dispute with Cambodia should be resolved bilaterally, without outside intervention, using a Joint Boundary Commission the two countries established 25 years ago.

But Cambodia wants to internationalise the dispute. It was the first to refer the escalating conflict to the UN Security Council last month. It has also asked the International Court of Justice to rule on where the border should lie. This has presented Thailand with a dilemma.

The official reason Thailand gives for rejecting ICJ involvement is that like many other countries it does not recognise ICJ jurisdiction. But just as important is a Thai collective memory of loss and humiliation at the ICJ which cuts to the heart of the border dispute.

Both Thailand and Cambodia have enshrined national stories of unjust territorial losses.

In Cambodia’s case it is the story of a once powerful empire reduced to poverty by war and revolution, and at the mercy of the territorial ambitions of its larger neighbours.

Thailand’s is a more recent story of being forced to sacrifice territories in the early 20th Century to stave off French or British colonial rule. When Thailand agreed to a new border with French-occupied Cambodia, it allowed French cartographers to draw the map.

But when Cambodia became an independent state in 1953, Thai forces occupied a spectacular Khmer temple called Preah Vihear, or Khao Phra Viharn in Thai, perched on a cliff top which was supposed to mark the border.

The Thais argued that the French cartographers had erred in moving the border away from the watershed, the agreed dividing line, putting the temple in Cambodia.

Cambodia took the dispute to the ICJ, and won.

The court ruled that, whatever the map’s flaws, Thailand had failed to challenge them in the preceding half century.

The then-Thai military ruler was shocked by the outcome, and wanted to attack Cambodia, but was persuaded by his diplomats to grudgingly accept the verdict.

Thailand’s sensitivity over its 1962 loss now makes it politically impossible for it to accept an ICJ role in resolving the remaining border disputes.

That has allowed Hun Sen to portray Thailand as defying international law.

Thailand is now countering the Cambodian narrative with a more effective one of its own: the use of landmines.

Both countries are signatories to the Ottawa Convention banning the use of anti-personnel mines, and Cambodia has a traumatic legacy of being one of the most mined countries in the world, for which it has received a lot of overseas funding.

So Thailand’s accusation that Cambodian soldiers have been laying new anti-personnel mines along the border, causing multiple injuries to Thai soldiers, is an awkward one for the government in Phnom Penh.

Initially Cambodia dismissed the allegation, saying these were old mines left from the civil war in the 1980s. The Thai government then took a group of diplomats and journalists to the border to show us what they have found.

Laid out on a table in the jungle, just a few hundred metres from the border, was a collection of munitions that Thai demining teams say they recovered from areas formerly occupied by Cambodian troops.

We were confined to a small clearing, marked off by red and white tape. Anywhere beyond that, they said, was unsafe. On the drive in along a muddy track we saw Thai soldiers in camouflaged bunkers hidden in the trees.

Among the munitions were dozens of thick, green plastic discs about the diameter of a saucer. These were Russian-made PMN-2 mines which contain a large quantity of explosives – enough to cause severe limb damage – and are difficult to deactivate. Some appeared to be brand new, and had not been laid.

The initial images of these prompted Cambodia to dismiss the Thai claims as unfounded because the arming pins had not been removed.

However, we were shown other mines which had been armed and buried, but clearly recently – not in the 1980s.

Thailand is calling for action against Cambodia by other signatories to the Ottawa Convention, and is asking countries which support demining programmes in Cambodia to stop funding them.

It argues that Cambodia’s refusal to admit laying mines or to agree on a plan to remove them demonstrates a lack of good faith in resolving the border dispute.

Cambodia has fired back by accusing Thailand of using cluster munitions and white phosphorus shells, which are not banned but can also pose a threat to non-combatants; the Thai military has acknowledged using them but only, it says, against military targets.

Cambodia has also published pictures of what it says is damage to the Preah Vihear temple, a World Heritage Site, by Thai shelling, something that the Thai military has denied.

The incessant volleys of accusations from both countries make any progress on their border dispute unlikely.

Hun Sen and his son have benefited politically from being able to depict themselves as defenders of Cambodian soil, but the conflict has made the political challenges faced by the Thai government even worse.

It has stirred intense animosity between Thai and Cambodian nationalists. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian migrant workers have left Thailand, which will hit an already struggling Cambodian economy.

“Both sides are describing the border as a sacred dividing line between their countries”, says Mr Strangio. “The symbolism is hugely important. This cuts to very deep questions of national identity, and it’s something that neither side can afford to take a step back from at the moment.”

Chinese scientists are in a battle to save one of the last large animal species living in the Yangtze River – and a complete ban on fishing in the region is helping them.

At the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan, just 5km (3.1 miles) from the banks of the river, the preserved bodies of the now-extinct river dolphin (baiji in Chinese) and paddle fish sit silently behind panes of glass.

“Now that those have become extinct, we’re going to save the Yangtze river porpoise,” Professor Wang Xi tells the BBC. “It has become the most important animal here.”

It was in 2002 that the last known baiji died, 22 years after researchers at the Institute started caring for it. A year later, the last known paddle fish – a type of ray-finned fish which can grow to more than 3 metres – was accidentally caught by fishermen and, despite being radio tagged and released, disappeared.

The goal now is to stop the Yangtze finless river porpoise – 1,200 of which remain in the wild, according to current estimates – from suffering the same fate.

“It’s the only top-level predator left in the river,” Professor Wang explains. “They are rare and their numbers reflect the health of the entire system’s ecology.”

The idea of a halt on all fishing was first conceived by Professor Cao Wenxuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2006, but it took a lot more pressure from fellow scientists before a full 10-year-ban finally came into force nearly five years ago.

Enforced by police, the ban carries potential prison time for those caught fishing right along the Yangtze, as well as adjacent lakes and tributaries. It’s been hugely disruptive, and put 220,000 fishermen out of work.

Yet the finless porpoise, which belongs to the oldest living branch of the porpoise family tree, remains critically endangered today.

Those the BBC was shown at the Institute are being held in captivity to be studied by CAS. They can be seen from above the water or below, after taking the stairs down beside a deep tank where the observation area is located.

The scientists say they get excited in the company of humans, and they certainly appear to be showing off: racing through the water and swimming at speed, close to the glass with people on the other side. Swimming past, they seem to look at you with a mischievous smile.

In the wild, they are still hanging on where other species could not.

The construction of the main part of Three Gorges Dam in 2006 didn’t directly impact the finless porpoise, which don’t have to go upstream to spawn, although it did affect the fish they eat.

For other large marine animals, like the paddle fish or the Chinese sturgeon, the structure was catastrophic.

Wang Ding, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), who specialises in cetaceans like the finless porpoise, has dedicated his life to preserving the health of the Yangtze. He can see the good and the bad with these dams – and recalls how things used to be.

“Every flood season we’d have to organise a team with strong muscles, using many men, to go to sleep on the bank of the river, just in case a flood came,” he says. “Then, if the flood hit, everyone would do their best to try to keep the levy banks solid, to make sure they were not broken by the dangerous rushing water.”

Now, he says, the Three Gorges Dam mitigates against the flooding.

As Professor Wang points out, however, this massive, river-blocking structure also prevents the Yangtze’s giant sturgeons from reaching their spawning grounds.

While the endangered fish had briefly seemed to find an alternative location, he says, this is no longer the case – and these days sturgeons are only in the river because researchers are pouring them in, 10,000 at a time.

Despite over a million captive-bred sturgeon being released into the Yangtze last year, attempts to boost the population have been unsuccessful, as the fish are not reproducing by themselves in the wild.

So the finless porpoise doesn’t end up like this, Professor Wang and other scientists are hoping that the current complete fishing ban will continue after the initial 10 years is up.

Their research, published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, records a drastic increase in fish numbers since the ban came into effect in 2021.

Another threat to the finless porpoise, however, might be harder to resolve.

Wang Xi pointed out that “ships are very dangerous for animal’s brains because they are very noisy”.

This is said to produce a form of underwater noise pollution which distresses the animals.

Chinese scientists think that the sound from ships may have contributed to the demise of the Yangtze’s baiji river dolphins, which used sonar to communicate.

But it’s one thing to ban fishing – it would be quite another to completely stop the busy river traffic which delivers passengers as well as goods, and provides lifeblood for much of central China’s economy.

More achievable was forcing factories which produce chemicals to move away from the Yangtze. Thousands of these have been shut down or relocated over the past decade, in a move that is said to have significantly improved the river’s water quality.

There has also been community involvement in the porpoise preservation push.

After retirement, Yang He took up amateur photography. Now, he says, he goes to the river every day with his camera equipment trying to spot the animals.

When he gets some good shots he forwards them to the scientists, who say he’s doing a better job than almost anyone tracking their progress.

Mr Yang says he once saw a porpoise in distress which had been caught in some netting. He notified the local authorities, who shut down that section of river to all shipping until it could be rescued – and it turned out the soon-to-be freed porpoise was pregnant. He felt pretty good about that, he says.

It is the porpoise numbers, however, that tell the most convincing story.

In the 1990s there were 3,300 finless porpoises in the wild. By 2006 this had halved.

Then the fishing bans came in, the factories were moved and the decline stopped. Not only that, but over the last five years of records, porpoise numbers have gone up by nearly a quarter.

Scientists are proud of these numbers – and the implications they hold for the health of the environment more broadly.

“We’re saving the finless porpoise to save the Yangtze River,” says Wang Ding. “This is like a great mirror, to have an idea how well we have been doing protecting this ecosystem.

“If the porpoises are doing fine, if their numbers are increasing, this means the ecological health of the whole river is also improving.”

The family of a father who vanished with his three children into New Zealand’s wilderness almost four years ago have pleaded for him to come home.

A national search has been ongoing for Tom Phillips since he took Ember, nine, Maverick, 10, and Jayda, 12, from their family home in December 2021 over what police say was a custody battle.

They were seen in public for the first time since vanishing last October, when a group of teenagers spotted them trekking through the bush and filmed the encounter.

For the first time since their disappearance, Mr Phillips’ family have directly appealed to him, with his mother writing: “Everyday I wake up and hope that today will be the day that you all come home.”

“There’s a lot of love and there’s a lot of support, and we’re ready to help you walk through what you need to walk through,” his sister, Rozzi Phillips, told New Zealand news site Stuff in an exclusive interview.

“I miss you, and I miss being part of your life, and I really want to see you and the kids and be part of your lives again.”

Ms Phillips said her brother was a capable builder who she believed would have built a hut or “nest” in the bush as shelter.

She also provided Stuff with a handwritten note from their mother, Julia, which reads: “Tom – I feel really sad that you thought you had to do this. Not considering how much we love you and can support you. It hurts every time I see photos of the children and of you and see some of your stuff that is still here.”

“Jayda, Maverick, Ember – I love you so much and really miss being part of your lives.”

Police have said they believe Mr Phillips took his children after losing legal custody of them to their mother.

They believe Mr Phillips and his children have been hiding and camping in the North Island’s western Waikato region and last year posted an NZ$80,000 (£37,200) reward for information on their whereabouts.

There have been occasional sightings of the family, including in October when a group of teenage pig hunters who had been trekking through an untamed area of Marokopa – a tiny coastal community where Mr Phillips hails from – spotted them and filmed the encounter on their phones.

In the video, Tom Phillips can be seen leading his children through the rugged terrain. They are all wearing camouflaged clothing.

New Zealand media reported the teenagers had briefly spoken to one of their children – asking if anyone knew they were there. The child had replied “only you” and kept walking, the father of one of the teenagers told New Zealand’s 1News.

The teenagers reported that Mr Phillips had been carrying a gun and had a long beard while the children were masked and carrying their own packs.

New Zealand Police described the sighting as “credible”. That prompted an unsuccessful three-day search involving police and army helicopters.

Last year, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Mr Phillips over his suspected involvement in a bank robbery in Te Kuiti, a small town on the North Island.

Police said he had an accomplice during the alleged incident, and cautioned the public against approaching him as he was probably armed.

Police have said they believe Mr Phillips is being helped in his evasion of the law by other parties.