A Thai court has dismissed Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin for appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who was once jailed.

The Constitutional Court ruled that Mr Srettha had violated the “rules on ethics” with “the display of defiant behaviour”.

The 62-year-old Srettha, who has been in power for less than a year, is the third PM in 16 years to be removed by the same court.

He will be replaced by an interim leader until Thailand’s parliament convenes to elect a new prime minister.

“I’m confident in my honesty … I feel sorry, but I’m not saying I disagree with the ruling,” he said at a press conference shortly after the ruling. The court’s ruling is final and cannot be appealed.

Mr Srettha’s dismissal means he has now gone the way of so many other parties and administrations in Thailand – felled by the disproportionate power of the country’s constitutional court.

Politics in Thailand is not known for its ethics; bribery is commonplace and ministers with more serious convictions have been allowed to serve in the past.

Most people in Thailand will see this as a political verdict, though exactly who was pushing for it is not yet clear.

In May the court had accepted a petition filed by some 40 senators asking to remove the PM from his position over his appointment of Pichit Chuenban – who was previously sentenced to six months in jail for attempted bribery.

On Wednesday, five of the nine judges ruled that Mr Srettha had indeed violated the ethics of his office by appointing a lawyer who had a criminal conviction to his cabinet, despite him quitting after just 19 days.

The vote for a new prime minister will involve plenty of backroom bargaining, while Thailand struggles to revive its faltering economy.

Hopes that the country was now putting the political turmoil, including two military coups that have shaken it for the past two decades, have proved premature.

Mr Srettha became prime minister only last August, ending nine years of military-dominated governments in Thailand.

His appointment too was the result of a political bargain that froze out the young, reformist Move Forward party, which had won the most seats and votes in last year’s general election.

It was a stunning victory that raised hopes for a fresh start for Thailand but Move Forward was blocked from forming the government by the military-appointed senate.

The election’s second-biggest winner Pheu Thai then struck a deal with other conservative parties to form a ruling coalition without Move Forward – and Mr Srettha found himself at the helm.

Last week, the constitutional court dissolved the Move Forward party for making unconstitutional campaign promises and banned 11 party leaders from politics for 10 years.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) has cancelled an acclaimed pianist’s upcoming recital after comments he made on the Israel-Gaza war.

Jayson Gillham premiered Witness at a show at the MSO on Sunday. The piece was penned by another composer as a tribute to the Palestinian press.

The British-Australian was scheduled to perform again on Thursday, but the MSO has said it is reworking the programme after Gillham introduced the piece by saying Israel had killed more than 100 journalists.

A spokesperson for Gillham told the ABC he won’t comment on the decision to drop him “out of respect to the MSO and his ongoing relationship with them”.

Gillham – who is billed on the MSO website as “as one of the finest pianists of his generation” – was born in Australia but lives in the UK.

At the concert at the Iwaki Auditorium on Sunday, he performed a range of works, from Beethoven to Chopin. He also played Witness, written by Australian composer Connor D’Netto, which the MSO says was a last-minute addition.

“Over the last 10 months, Israel has killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists,” Mr Gillham said before starting the piece.

A number were “targeted assassinations of prominent journalists” who were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing press jackets, he claimed.

“The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world,” he added.

In an email to patrons, the MSO said they were blindsided by Mr Gillham’s comments and he had put them in a “difficult situation”.

“The MSO does not condone the use of our stage as a platform for expressing personal views”, it added.

Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive on Gaza and the current war.

More than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent organisation that promotes press freedom, reports that 113 of those were journalists.

Apologising for the “offence and distress” caused, the MSO said it had removed Gillham from the program and would update customers soon.

In a statement given to local media, a spokesperson for the MSO said: “Mr Gillham’s remarks went beyond the remit of his contract.”

The decision has caused a backlash on social media. High profile barrister Greg Barns said the cancellation was “truly appalling” while arts critics and former Sydney Symphony Orchestra chairman Leo Schofield said “MSO management should hang its collective head in shame”.

The Israel-Gaza war has become a volatile political issue in Australia that all sides have sought to carefully manage.

As has been the case in countless other countries, there have been protests from both Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as a sharp uptick in Islamophobia and antisemitism.

A US Army analyst has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to sell military secrets to China, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has said.

Sgt Korbein Schultz was arrested in March after an investigation by the FBI and US Army counterintelligence alleged that he was paid $42,000 (£33,000) in exchange for dozens of sensitive security records.

The criminal conspiracy began in June 2022 and continued up until his arrest, officials said.

He is scheduled for sentencing in January.

Sgt Schultz, who held a security clearance to access top secret information, conspired to collect data with someone whom he believed to be living in Hong Kong, according to court documents.

The purported Hong Kong resident asked Sgt Schultz to collect sensitive data related to missile defence and mobile artillery systems, according to court records.

Sgt Schultz also collected data on US fighter aircraft, military tactics, and the US military’s defence strategy for Taiwan, based on what it learned from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“By conspiring to transmit national defence information to a person living outside the United States, this defendant callously put our national security at risk to cash in on the trust our military placed in him,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division said.

Sgt Schultz on Tuesday pleaded guilty to all charges against him, including conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information and bribery of a public official.

The indictment against Sgt Schultz earlier detailed messages he sent to the supposed Hong Kong resident, who was referred to in court documents as Conspirator A.

In one exchange, Sgt Schultz said he “wished he could be Jason Bourne” in reference to the fictional spy character.

After being promised more money from his handler, he said in another message: “I hope so! I need to get my other BMW back!”.

The FBI and US Army Counterintelligence Command are continuing investigations into the case.

Early on Friday morning, a 31-year-old female trainee doctor retired to sleep in a seminar hall after a gruelling day at one of India’s oldest hospitals.

It was the last time she was seen alive.

The next morning, her colleagues discovered her half-naked body on the podium, bearing extensive injuries. Police later arrested a hospital volunteer worker in connection with what they say is a case of rape and murder at Kolkata’s 138-year-old RG Kar Medical College.

Tens of thousands of women in Kolkata and across West Bengal state are expected to participate in a ‘Reclaim the Night’ march at midnight on Wednesday, demanding the “independence to live in freedom and without fear”. The march takes place just before India’s Independence Day on Thursday. Outraged doctors have struck work both in the city and across India, demanding a strict federal law to protect them.

The tragic incident has again cast a spotlight on the violence against doctors and nurses in the country. Reports of doctors, regardless of gender, being assaulted by patients and their relatives have gained widespread attention. Women – who make up nearly 30% of India’s doctors and 80% of the nursing staff – are more vulnerable than their male colleagues.

The crime in the Kolkata hospital last week exposed the alarming security risks faced by the medical staff in many of India’s state-run health facilities.

At RG Kar Hospital, which sees over 3,500 patients daily, the overworked trainee doctors – some working up to 36 hours straight – had no designated rest rooms, forcing them to seek rest in a third-floor seminar room.

Reports indicate that the arrested suspect, a volunteer worker with a troubled past, had unrestricted access to the ward and was captured on CCTV. Police allege that no background checks were conducted on the volunteer.

“The hospital has always been our first home; we only go home to rest. We never imagined it could be this unsafe. Now, after this incident, we’re terrified,” says Madhuparna Nandi, a junior doctor at Kolkata’s 76-year-old National Medical College.

Dr Nandi’s own journey highlights how female doctors in India’s government hospitals have become resigned to working in conditions that compromise their security.

At her hospital, where she is a resident in gynaecology and obstetrics, there are no designated rest rooms and separate toilets for female doctors.

“I use the patients’ or the nurses’ toilets if they allow me. When I work late, I sometimes sleep in an empty patient bed in the ward or in a cramped waiting room with a bed and basin,” Dr Nandi told me.

She says she feels insecure even in the room where she rests after 24-hour shifts that start with outpatient duty and continue through ward rounds and maternity rooms.

One night in 2021, during the peak of the Covid pandemic, some men barged into her room and woke her by touching her, demanding, “Get up, get up. See our patient.”

“I was completely shaken by the incident. But we never imagined it would come to a point where a doctor could be raped and murdered in the hospital,” Dr Nandi says.

What happened on Friday was not an isolated incident. The most shocking case remains that of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at a prominent Mumbai hospital, who was left in a persistent vegetative state after being raped and strangled by a ward attendant in 1973. She died in 2015, after 42 years of severe brain damage and paralysis. More recently, in Kerala, Vandana Das, a 23-year-old medical intern, was fatally stabbed with surgical scissors by a drunken patient last year.

In overcrowded government hospitals with unrestricted access, doctors often face mob fury from patients’ relatives after a death or over demands for immediate treatment. Kamna Kakkar, an anaesthetist, remembers a harrowing incident during a night shift in an intensive care unit (ICU) during the pandemic in 2021 at her hospital in Haryana in northern India.

“I was the lone doctor in the ICU when three men, flaunting a politician’s name, forced their way in, demanding a much in-demand controlled drug. I gave in to protect myself, knowing the safety of my patients was at stake,” Dr Kakkar told me.

Namrata Mitra, a Kolkata-based pathologist who studied at the RG Kar Medical College, says her doctor father would often accompany her to work because she felt unsafe.

“During my on-call duty, I took my father with me. Everyone laughed, but I had to sleep in a room tucked away in a long, dark corridor with a locked iron gate that only the nurse could open if a patient arrived,” Dr Mitra wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend.

“I’m not ashamed to admit I was scared. What if someone from the ward – an attendant, or even a patient – tried something? I took advantage of the fact that my father was a doctor, but not everyone has that privilege.”

When she was working in a public health centre in a district in West Bengal, Dr Mitra spent nights in a dilapidated one-storey building that served as the doctor’s hostel.

“From dusk, a group of boys would gather around the house, making lewd comments as we went in and out for emergencies. They would ask us to check their blood pressure as an excuse to touch us and they would peek through the broken bathroom windows,” she wrote.

Years later, during an emergency shift at a government hospital, “a group of drunk men passed by me, creating a ruckus, and one of them even groped me”, Dr Mitra said. “When I tried to complain, I found the police officers dozing off with their guns in hand.”

Things have worsened over the years, says Saraswati Datta Bodhak, a pharmacologist at a government hospital in West Bengal’s Bankura district. “Both my daughters are young doctors and they tell me that hospital campuses in the state are overrun by anti-social elements, drunks and touts,” she says. Dr Bodhak recalls seeing a man with a gun roaming around a top government hospital in Kolkata during a visit.

India lacks a stringent federal law to protect healthcare workers. Although 25 states have some laws to prevent violence against them, convictions are “almost non-existent”, RV Asokan, president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), an organisation of doctors, told me. A 2015 survey by IMA found that 75% of doctors in India have faced some form of violence at work. “Security in hospitals is almost absent,” he says. “One reason is that nobody thinks of hospitals as conflict zones.”

Some states like Haryana have deployed private bouncers to strengthen security at government hospitals. In 2022, the federal government asked the states to deploy trained security forces for sensitive hospitals, install CCTV cameras, set up quick reaction teams, restrict entry to “undesirable individuals” and file complaints against offenders. Nothing much has happened, clearly.

Even the protesting doctors don’t seem to be very hopeful. “Nothing will change… The expectation will be that doctors should work round the clock and endure abuse as a norm,” says Dr Mitra. It is a disheartening thought.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will not seek re-election as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which he says needs a “new start”.

The 67-year-old LDP veteran is expected to step down as PM after the party elects a new leader in September.

Support for Mr Kishida, who has been PM since 2021, has fallen in the wake of a corruption scandal involving his party, rising living costs and a slumping yen.

His approval ratings had plummeted to 15.5% last month – the lowest for a PM in more than a decade.

“In the upcoming presidential election, it’s necessary to show the people that the Liberal Democratic Party will change,” Mr Kishida said at a press conference on Wednesday announcing his decision.

“A transparent and open election, and free and open debate are important. The first easy-to-understand step that indicates that the LDP will change is for me to step back,” he said.

Within the party, some have doubted whether Mr Kishida can lead the LDP to a win in the next general election due in 2025. The party has been in power almost continuously since 1955.

Still, LDP leaders were shocked by Mr Kishida’s announcement.

A senior leader told broadcaster NHK that he had tried to persuade Mr Kishida to run for office, but the prime minister said that would have been “irresponsible”.

A member of Mr Kishida’s faction in the party called the decision “very regrettable and unfortunate”, adding that the PM “had a good record in foreign policy, defence policy, and domestic politics, but he was forced to [step down] due to the issue of politics and money.”

Analysts have told the BBC that Japan is going through a “once-in-a-generation” political crisis as the ruling party fights to clean up its image.

Last December, four LDP cabinet ministers resigned within a fortnight over a fundraising scandal involving the ruling party’s most powerful faction.

Five senior vice-ministers and a parliamentary vice-minister from the same faction, formerly led by the late PM Shinzo Abe, also quit.

Japan’s prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into whether dozens of LDP lawmakers received proceeds from fundraising events that saw millions of dollars kept off official party records.

But Mr Kishida’s handling of the fundraising scandal drew public criticism, which made him more unpopular.

The controversy also unfolded as Japanese households struggled with food prices soaring at the fastest rate in almost half a century.

The combination of economic woes and political scandal fuelled mistrust in the ruling party, despite a weak and divided opposition.

“From now on, the entire political situation will be in flux,” Jun Azumi, an MP from the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party told NHK, after Mr Kishida’s announcement.

Mr Kishida comes from a family of politicians – both his father and grandfather were members of Japan’s House of Representatives.

He was first elected to the House in 1993. He went on to become Japan’s longest-serving foreign minister when he held the post between 2012 and 2017.

He took over as PM in October 2021, succeeding Yoshihide Suga who resigned after just one year in office. He led the LDP to victory shortly after in the 2021 general election.

In the last three years, Mr Kishida’s government pushed for policies to lift wages and household incomes amid a cost-of-living crunch.

He oversaw Japan’s reopening after the Covid-19 pandemic, and was in office when the country experienced one of its most shocking political moments – the assassination of former PM Shinzo Abe in July 2022. He also made the controversial decision to honor the slain leader with a state funeral.

Even though he struggled domestically, Mr Kishida regularly made headlines for his diplomacy.

Japan has long been a key US ally in a fraught Indo-Pacific where it faces an assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea. And Mr Kishida has been successful in expanding the country’s military budget and taking cautious steps away from its post-war pacifist ideals.

Defence cooperation with Washington has deepened under his government, and he also mended relations with South Korea, receiving President Yoon Suk Yeol in Tokyo on a historic visit.

In another unprecedented move, Japan, the US and South Korea issued a joint statement at a Camp David summit last August, calling for expanding cooperation among them.

Police in New Zealand are racing to trace sweets containing “potentially lethal levels of methamphetamine” after they were distributed by a charity in Auckland.

Up to 400 people may have received the sweets from Auckland City Mission as part of a food parcel, said the anti-poverty charity.

The sweets were donated anonymously by a member of the public in a sealed retail package, it added.

At least three people, including a child, sought medical attention afterwards though none are currently in hospital.

“We did not know that the lollies contained methamphetamine when they were distributed,” the charity’s spokesperson told the BBC.

Each individual sweet could have a street value of around NZ$1,000 ($601; £468), according to the New Zealand Drug Foundation.

Police say while the incident could be accidental rather than a targeted operation, they had not drawn any conclusions as it is “a bit early to say”.

The charity alerted the authorities on Tuesday after being alerted by a recipient about the “funny tasting” sweets.

Helen Robinson, chief executive of Auckland City Mission, said that some of the charity’s staff members tried the sweets themselves and agreed with the complaints, and started to “feel funny” afterwards.

They then sent sweets that were still on site to the NZ Drug Foundation for tests, which confirmed that potentially lethal levels of methamphetamine were contained in the samples.

In a statement, the foundation said they found about 3g of methamphetamine in a sweet that was sent for testing.

“A common dose to swallow is between 10-25mg, so this contaminated lolly contained up to 300 doses,” says its head Sarah Helm, adding that swallowing such amount of the drug is “extremely dangerous and could result in death”.

Methamphetamine can cause chest pain, racing heart, seizures, hyperthermia, delirium and loss of consciousness, according to the foundation.

According to Ms Robinson, the mission distributes around 50,000 food parcels a year and only commercially manufactured food are included in these parcels.

Police have asked people that have sweets wrapped in brand Rinda’s yellow pineapple flavour packaging to contact them immediately.

“It’s vital the public are aware of these lollies and the hazard that they present,” Detective Inspector Glenn Baldwin said in a press conference on Wednesday.

Describing it as a “deeply concerning” matter, he said that such cases of food laced with meth had happened before and they would likely work with Interpol on the investigation, which may take some time.

Rinda, a Malaysian confectioner, told BBC News that it has come to their attention that their products may have been misused in connection with illegal substances and the company “does not use or condone the use of any illegal drugs” in their products.

“We will work closely with law enforcement and relevant authorities to address this issue and protect the integrity of our brand,” the firm said in a statement.

Steven Peh, the general manager of Rinda, told local news site Stuff NZ that the contaminated candy he had seen in photos was white, whereas Rinda’s product is yellow.

The authorities are still trying to understand the scale of the spread. 16 packets have been recovered so far – police say each packet could possibly contain 20 – 30 sweets but they don’t know the exact number in the 16 packets. Up to 400 people have been contacted by the charity.

Ms Robinson said the sweets likely came into the charity’s posession in about mid-July, but that they are calling everyone as far back as 1 July to be safe.

Ben Birks Ang, deputy director of the NZ Drug Foundation, said the organisation believes the incident was unlikely to be intentional as “disclosing substances as something else to smuggle it into another area is common”.

But there are still fears that other charities could be affected.

Ms Robinson said she had contacted other charities to check for their sweets.

“To say we are devastated is an absolute understatement,” she told the press, adding that one in five in New Zealand experience food insecurity, which makes the incident “deeply distressing”.

The remote Pacific Island nation of Kiribati headed to the polls on Wednesday in a general election that could hold profound implications for the South Pacific region.

The archipelago, which has a population of about 116,000, is viewed as strategically valuable to both China and the United States due to its relatively close proximity to Hawaii and its relatively vast claim of oceanic territory, according to experts.

In recent years its government has also forged strong relations with Beijing, after current long-time President Taneti Maamau shifted the country’s ties from Taiwan to China in 2019.

Now, as President Maamau seeks to extend his near decade in power, outside observers are watching and waiting to see where Kiribati’s geopolitical allegiances will fall.

“In the space of five years we’ve seen a very rapid escalation of China’s political access, economic influence, and increasingly security access into Kiribati and the territory that it controls – a hugely significant change brought on by the incumbent president,” Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific Islands program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, told BBC News.

“That’s the issue that’s at stake: this rapid escalation in ties between Kiribati and China.”

On the ground, Mr Sora said, the I-Kirabiti people will likely have voted based on issues affecting them day-to-day, such as the cost of living, the economy, and the “poor state of government services”.

“But internationally, of course, people will be interested in what foreign policy posture would a new government take,” he added.

While US efforts to establish an embassy in Kiribati stall, China’s presence in the country has become increasingly tangible. In February, Reuters reported that Chinese police had begun working alongside local authorities on the ground in Kiribati.

Last month, China donated riot control gear to the Kiribati police force, saying it was willing to “elevate China-Kiribati relations to a new level”, according to a post on Kiribati Police Service’s Facebook.

From China’s perspective, Kiribati has become increasingly strategically valuable as geopolitical rivalries in the South Pacific grow, according to Mr Sora.

It is for this same reason that warming ties between the two nations have stoked anxieties in the West.

“Ultimately the scenario that the US and allies will be looking to avoid is the establishment of infrastructure that has you seeing Chinese vessels on rotation in Kiribati, for example, or the placement of personnel,” Mr Sora said.

“The implication of the incumbent retaining power is that this trajectory continues and China increases and consolidates its strategic access to Kiribati.

“And that changes regional security dynamics. It adds a security overhead to the Pacific Islands region that we haven’t seen for a long time.”

Blake Johnson, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said from Kiribati’s perspective, China is likely seen as a valuable development partner that can provide support against economic and climatic concerns.

“Obviously a lot of these [South Pacific] countries are quite small, they’re facing large climate and environmental threats, and so they need access to a range of partners to really keep building on their development. And that includes China,” Mr Johnson told BBC Newsday.

As people on the ground in Kiribati cast their votes, he added, they might have been questioning whether their government’s relationship with China is truly improving their quality of life, or negatively impacting it.

“Geopolitics always come second to the everyday needs of the people,” Mr Johnson said.

Mr Sora added that in many ways global geopolitical concerns have distracted from these more pressing, everyday issues.

“You have this competition for access and influence playing out in various ways… but one of the criticisms is that it’s distracted from development partner support to traditional sectors like health and education,” he said.

“It’s quite easy to demonstrate how geopolitics has distracted from key development issues.”

Voting is not compulsory in Kiribati, and Wednesday’s ballot is the first of two rounds in which citizens will select the country’s members of parliament. These will be followed by the vote for president.

The country’s last election was in 2020.

Chinese car maker Zeekr says its new electric vehicle (EV) batteries charge faster than any of its rivals, including industry leaders Tesla and BYD.

The firm claims its upgraded batteries can be charged from 10% to 80% capacity in 10 and a half minutes using its ultra-fast charging stations.

In comparison, Elon Musk’s Tesla says a 15 minute charge allows its Model 3 to cover 175 miles (282km), a little under half the car’s full range.

Zeekr’s 2025 007 sedan, which will be available from next week, will be its first vehicle to have the new battery.

The battery performs well even in cold weather charging from 10% to 80% of its capacity in less than half an hour at temperatures as low as -10C, the company also said.

BBC News has contacted Tesla and BYD to request a response to Zeekr’s announcement.

Tu Le, founder and managing director of consultancy firm Sino Auto Insights told the BBC: “Tesla’s charging technology is not industry leading anymore and has not been for some time.”

“These bold claims by Zeekr are believable, but more importantly even if it’s not the fastest charging EV battery, being one for the fastest is still quite a leap for them”.

“The competition in China is incredibly fierce and while brands like BYD prioritise scale and sales, brands like Zeekr, Li [Auto] and Nio are focused on maximising the charging experience,” said Mark Rainford, a China-based car industry commentator.

“Zeekr’s parent company, Geely, is pretty much a vertically integrated business… they have the resources to do this,” he added.

Geely owns several brands, including UK-based luxury sports car brand Lotus and Sweden’s Volvo.

In May, Zeekr’s shares started trading on the New York Stock Exchange, marking the first major US market debut by a Chinese company since 2021.

The shares are currently trading 27% below the price set in its initial public offering (IPO).

The listing came just days before the Biden administration announced major tariff hikes on Chinese-made electric cars, solar panels, steel and other goods.

The White House said the measures, which included a 100% border tax on EVs from China, were a response to unfair policies and intended to protect US jobs.

Officials in the US, the European Union and other major car markets have grown increasingly concerned about the rapid overseas expansion of Chinese EV companies.

The US is aiming “to turn the temperature down” in the Middle East, the country’s ambassador to the UN has said, as fears of an Iranian retaliatory attack on Israel loom.

On Tuesday, Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN Security Council in New York the US wanted to “deter and defend against any future attack and avoid regional conflict”.

There are fears Iran could retaliate against Israel following July’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran – something Israel has not said it was behind.

US President Joe Biden suggested reaching a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza could help deter Iran from launching an attack on Israel.

“That’s my expectation but we’ll see,” he said when asked by a reporter on Tuesday.

“We’ll see what Iran does and we’ll see what happens if there’s any attack, but I’m not giving up,” he said, while exiting his plane during a visit to New Orleans, Louisiana.

A new round of ceasefire talks is scheduled to take place in either Doha or Cairo on Thursday.

But a Hamas official in Lebanon, Ahmad Abdul Hadi, has said Hamas will not take part in the talks, according to reports by the New York Times and Sky News.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed plans to travel to the Middle East on Tuesday to participate in negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire deal.

International mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar have been pushing for an agreement that would see Israeli hostages released to their families in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Meanwhile, Washington has also approved new arms sales worth $20bn (£15.5bn) to Israel.

The state department said Israel would buy 50 F-15 fighter jets, as well as 33,000 tank cartridges, up to 50,000 mortar cartridges and new military cargo vehicles. The aircraft will begin to be delivered in 2029.

At the Security Council meeting in New York, Ms Thomas-Greenfield called for a ceasefire deal to be finalised.

“A broader regional conflict is not inevitable,” she said.

“The United States’ overall goal remains to turn the temperature down in the region, deter and defend against any future attacks, and avoid regional conflict,” she added.

“That starts with finalising a deal for an immediate ceasefire with hostage release in Gaza. We need to get this over the finish line.”

But Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, accused the Security Council of not doing enough to stop Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

“Wake up. Stop finding excuses. Stop imagining that you can reason with the Israeli government so it stops killing civilians by the thousands, imposing famine, torturing prisoners, colonising and annexing our land, all while you appeal to them, call on them, demand them to stop,” Mr Mansour said.

Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan said the Israeli military took every possible measure to minimise collateral damage and accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

He also criticised the Security Council for not condemning the actions of Iran.

“As we speak here now, millions of Israelis are preparing for a direct Iranian attack, just as they did in April. Iran’s aggression threatens the entire region with war.”

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 39,920 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Hundreds of people have also been killed in the almost daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military across the Israel-Lebanon border since the day after the start of the conflict.

Amid a flurry of international diplomacy to de-escalate tensions, Iran on Monday dismissed calls from the UK and other Western countries to refrain from retaliation against Israel for the killing of Haniyeh.

Israel, which did not say it was involved in Haniyeh’s assassination, has meanwhile put its military on its highest alert level.

The US has warned that it is preparing for “a significant set of attacks” by Iran or its proxies as soon as this week, and has built up its military presence in the Middle East to help defend Israel.

Boxer Imane Khelif has filed a lawsuit over alleged cyberbullying during the Paris 2024 Olympics, which reportedly names author JK Rowling and X owner Elon Musk.

The Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, despite being disqualified from last year’s World Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA), after she was reported to have failed gender eligibility tests in 2023.

However, the International Olympic Committee strongly defended Khelif’s right to compete and ruled her to be eligible.

Her lawyer Nabil Boudi told Variety on Tuesday that Musk and Rowling would be named in the lawsuit, following comments they made on social media.

Khelif’s participation was widely discussed online, after Italian boxer Angela Carini abandoned her Olympic bout against her after 46 seconds.

Paris public prosecutor’s office told news agency AFP on Wednesday that they had launched a cyberbullying probe, following a complaint by Khelif.

However, a prominent French legal blogger wrote on X that it is unlikely Mr Musk or Ms Rowling would face prosecution, as French penal law doesn’t apply to acts committed outside of France against foreign nationals.

But prosecutors could press charges against those who sent messages on French soil.

Khelif, along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, was cleared to compete in the women’s boxing in Paris, having been disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships for failing to meet eligibility criteria.

But the IOC took a different view, strongly defending the two boxers.

“This is a question of justice: women must be allowed to take part in women’s competitions. And the two are women,” IOC president Thomas Bach said.

X CEO Mr Musk and Harry Potter author Ms Rowling both posted comments about the boxer, with Ms Rowling saying Khelif was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head” following the fight with Carini.

Mr Musk shared a post from swimmer Riley Gaines which said “men don’t belong in women’s sports”.

BBC News has contacted representatives for Mr Musk and Ms Rowling for comment.

Following her win, Khelif said “attacks” over her gender eligibility gave her victory against Chinese world champion Yang Liu a “special taste” after she won Olympic women’s boxing gold, a year after being disqualified from the World Championships.

“I am fully qualified to take part in this competition,” said 25-year-old Khelif. “I am a woman like any other woman.

“I was born a woman. I have lived as a woman. I competed as a woman – there is no doubt about that.”

A day after abandoning her own fight with Khelif, Carini said she “wanted to apologise” to her opponent for how she handled the moments afterwards, when she declined to shake hands with Khelif.

Yang had also been due to face Khelif in the final of last year’s World Championship – a title Yang went on to win – but Khelif was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) before they met.

The IBA said Khelif and Lin “failed to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA regulations”.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) allowed them to compete, raised doubts about the tests and strongly criticised the IBA.

A chaotic news conference held subsequently by the IBA did little to clear the confusion around Khelif and Lin’s bans.

Chief executive Chris Roberts said the pair had “chromosome tests”, while president Umar Kremlev appeared to suggest the tests determined the fighters’ testosterone levels.

The BBC has been unable to determine what the eligibility tests consisted of.

The Russian-led IBA was stripped of its status as amateur boxing’s governing body by the IOC in 2019 because of fears over its governance and regulation.

An 11-year-old girl stabbed eight times by a stranger in London’s Leicester Square this week is an Australian tourist, according to the country’s authorities.

The Australian foreign ministry disclosed her nationality on Tuesday and said it was offering assistance to the girl and her mother, who was with her at the time of the attack.

Both had been visiting London on holiday when they were set upon in the popular tourist district on Monday.

UK police have charged a 32-year-old man, Ioan Pintaru, with attempted murder.

Prosecutors told a London court on Tuesday that Mr Pintaru had approached the duo on Monday at about 11:30 BST. He grabbed the child, put her in a headlock and then attacked her with a steak knife.

“[He] stabbed her eight times to the body,” prosecutor David Burns told the Westminster Magistrate Court.

She suffered wounds to her face, neck, wrists and shoulders and which required plastic surgery in hospital. UK authorities say she has since been discharged.

Mr Pintaru was remanded in custody until his next court hearing on 10 September. UK authorities say he is a Romanian national with no fixed address.

Police have said they do not believe the stabbing was terror-related.

When Roberto Macri built his luxury hotel in the Kenyan coastal village of Kipini, it was about 100m (330ft) away from the beautiful waters of the Indian Ocean.

For nearly two decades his business thrived as tourists arrived in droves to enjoy the pristine beach and sunny weather.

The Tana Lodge Hotel, which was built on top of sand dunes, offered a spectacular view of the ocean.

But in 2014 people started to notice a change. The sea level had begun to rise and within five years, the hotel’s nine guest cottages had been swallowed by the sea – one after the other.

“The ocean changed steadily and started encroaching the hotel. The last standing cottage was gulped by the sea in 2019, marking the end of my glorious hotel,” Italian businessman Mr Macri told the BBC.

Now other residents of Kipini village, whose houses are located further back from the hotel, are facing the same prospect.

Kipini – built at the mouth of Kenya’s longest waterway, the Tana River, which flows into the Indian Ocean – is among several coastal villages that are slowly disappearing.

“The ocean advances every day and our houses are becoming weaker. We are afraid and distressed but there is nothing much we can do,” Saida Idris, a community leader, told the BBC.

She said several people had died and an unknown number were missing after being swept away by the rise in sea levels, coupled with strong winds and heavy tides, especially at night.

The depletion of mangrove forests along the shoreline – the coast’s main line of defence against erosion – is to blame.

Mangrove forests are full of salt-tolerant trees and shrubs that prevent sea water from advancing into farmlands by stabilising soil that otherwise could be washed away.

The cause of their disappearance appears to be a combination of deforestation by locals wanting coveted hard wood – and rising sea water as a result of climate change, which scientists feel is the major factor.

“The shoreline in Kipini is very exposed to the effects of strong winds that strengthen the ocean waves,” George Odera, a scientist with Fauna and Flora, a nature conservancy group, explained.

Kipini, with its welcoming palm trees and smells of spice and barbecuing seafood, evokes what every Kenyan pictures of laid-back coastal life.

But this idyll is under threat as the seawater levels continue to rise.

According to Omar Halki, a local administrator, nearly 10km (6.2 miles) of what used to be dry land have been swallowed by the sea in the last 10 years.

“It’s just a matter of time before the whole region goes under water,” he told the BBC.

Kipini has a population of about 4,000 people and residents told the BBC they could no longer dig or build strong foundations for their homes because of the rising sea levels.

Some in Kipini estimate that more than 1,000 people have relocated to other villages over the last decade.

Most of the wells or boreholes that used to give them fresh water have now turned saline, forcing them to look for alternative sources of drinking water.

The increasing salinity in groundwater has also severely affected farming.

Crabs and prawns, which have also served as a source of livelihood for locals, are now scarce as their breeding grounds are within the mangrove swamps.

The rising waters have affected almost all facets of life, including how people are buried.

“Graves are shallow because if we dig the recommended six feet, the dead will be buried in water,” one resident told the BBC.

Kipini is within Tana River county, which is facing multiple climate emergencies – from severe drought and water shortages in some places to flooding in others.

It is the county’s first recorded instance of a village being overtaken by rising sea levels.

But some locals say the geography of the coast has always changed – pointing to how the small fishing community of nearby Ungwana Bay was swept away years ago.

Others say the Tana River could be changing its course.

“Our forefathers showed us where the original waterway used to pass,” resident Rishadi Badi told the BBC, explaining that he was told the river used to pass through Kipini generations ago.

But Mr Odera, who studies the calamity facing Kipini, puts the blame squarely on climate change.

“What is happening in Kipini is not history, it is a recent occurrence and the bitter truth is, it is not getting better,” he said.

Local authorities want to build a sea wall along the 72km (45-mile) coastline to save the village from further intrusion by the ocean.

Although the authorities acknowledge the situation is dire, the wall project is yet to start because of a lack of funds, says Mwanajuma Hiribae, a senior land official in the county.

“The seawater intrusion is a deeper problem affecting about 15 other villages and the county government alone cannot undertake to solve it,” she told the BBC.

Although she said the UN Environment Programme and UN Habitat had expressed support for the wall project.

Similar walls have been built at the historical sites such as Fort Jesus in Mombasa and Vasco Da Gama Pillar in Malindi after the rise in seawater threatened these tourist attractions.

But climate experts say building a wall in Kipini is a “mechanistic solution”, and there needs to be conservation initiatives, like the restoration of mangrove forests.

“The sea is not something that the government will just wake up and stop. We need to help our communities to adapt and become more resilient to these climatic changes,” Mr Odera said.

Locals say that they feel like they are temporary visitors in their own homes, walking to the shore every day to check how far the ocean has moved.

“If no help comes within three years, the entire Kipini region will be swallowed by the ocean,” Mr Halki said.

For Mr Macri, the whole situation has been devastating and he has now moved to the coastal town of Malindi town,170km (100 miles) from Kipini.

“The area was like gold – a calm village with beautiful sand dunes surrounded by coconut trees and historical buildings just next to the beach,” he said.

All that remains of his $460,000 investment is what used to be the manager’s house, standing less than 50m from the sea and awaiting its fate.

Out of the 10 acres (four hectares) on which the hotel stood on, four are fully submerged.

Mr Macri is holding on to his remaining six acres hoping to return and invest again once the ocean has been stopped from encroaching on to land.

His former managing director, Joseph Gachango, is equally bereft.

“It broke my heart to see the hotel that used to attract guests from as far as Italy wiped out with about 50 workers losing their jobs,” he said.

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From its opening line, Donald Trump’s first television advertisement blasting rival Kamala Harris took aim at what his campaign believes is her biggest weakness – immigration.

“This is America’s border tsar,” a narrator said, over images of the vice-president dancing, “and she’s failed us.”

A series of statistics followed, illustrating what the Trump campaign says took place under Ms Harris, who was given a role in dealing with the border crisis by President Joe Biden soon after his inauguration.

The figures in the video ranged from 10 million illegal border crossings to 250,000 fentanyl-related overdose deaths.

The voice concluded: “Kamala Harris: failed, weak, dangerously liberal.”

The Harris campaign responded that the former president was running on “his trademark lies”.

It comes as little surprise that the Trump campaign took its first big swing at Ms Harris as the “failed border tsar”, blaming her for the high numbers of undocumented immigrants at the US southern border.

Americans have consistently said in polls this year that immigration is a top problem facing their country, and it will weigh on many of their minds when they cast ballots for the next US president in November.

Since that first ad, Trump and his running mate JD Vance have repeatedly labelled Ms Harris the “failed border tsar”, and tied her to relentless images of people wading across the Rio Grande or squeezing under razor wire into the US.

Her critics say she should have found a way to address the issue over the past four years.

But “border tsar” is a contested term. Allies and former officials who worked with the vice-president say she was not given responsibility for policing the border.

“It was never that position,” said Ricardo Zuniga, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of Western Hemisphere Affairs.

“She knew from the beginning, as did the entire US government, that it was about tackling migration at its source.”

In early 2021, President Biden gave Ms Harris the unenviable brief of dealing with the “root causes” of Central American immigration.

At the time, people were fleeing a perfect storm of gang-related violence, economic ruin and environmental disasters in a region called the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Talking to migrants passing through Mexico, it was clear that most came from Honduras where, they said, a brutal “narco-dictatorship” was in power and wages were as low as five dollars a day.

While the ultimate aim of the Harris role was to reduce the numbers of people arriving at the US border, Mr Biden never used the words “border tsar” in announcing her appointment.

“She is the most qualified person to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle in stemming the movement of so many folks to our southern border,” Mr Biden said at the time.

Still, many people came to see the assignment as all-encompassing. Several media organisations, including the BBC, described Ms Harris as a “tsar” in news reports.

Some commentators in Central America and Mexico questioned her qualifications, given Ms Harris had no prior experience in Latin American affairs.

Tsar or otherwise, the job was a daunting, thankless task.

Successfully dealing with decades of underinvestment and the region’s deep-seated economic and political strife would require huge amounts of money, along with goodwill and cross-party cooperation. That’s in woefully short supply in Washington, especially when it comes to immigration.

“The idea that any one US administration is going to alter 500 years of history in Central America in a four-year period is ludicrous,” says Ricardo Zúniga.

As the former lead US diplomat on the Northern Triangle, he maintains the Biden administration did make in-roads to Central America’s problems.

He points to Ms Harris’s help raising $5bn (£3.9bn) from the private sector for job creation and entrepreneurship in the region. Several former members of her team recount how she personally called CEOs, persuading them to put in funds.

During her visit to Guatemala and Mexico in June 2021, I saw Ms Harris try to show a kinder face, following four years of Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric. She said she appreciated that people were fleeing “hunger, hurricanes and pandemic” and went on to set up a Central American corruption task force.

That trip, though, is most remembered for her stark message to all prospective migrants: “Do not come. If you come to our border, you will be turned back.”

Millions ignored her warning. Roughly two years later, in December 2023, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers had 300,000 encounters with undocumented immigrants at the US southern border.

Many who have governed along the border in recent years take a dim view of Kamala Harris and her work in Central America.

“Whatever she was doing diplomatically in other countries, I wouldn’t call it very effective based on what we saw here at the actual border,” says Douglas Nicholls, the Republican Mayor of Yuma, Arizona.

“We had record numbers of people, numbers that far exceeded anything we’d ever seen before, including over three times the population of my city in one year. Those were scary numbers.”

The vice-president is a “legitimate” target on the issue, which he says is not “a made-up excuse to whip up support among the base.”

“It should have been addressed a lot earlier than it was,” says Mayor Nicholls.

Others suggest the funds Ms Harris helped raise had only a small impact on the major incentive driving people north – being paid in US dollars.

Ricardo Barrientos, the director of the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies, said US private-sector investment paled in comparison to the remittances Central American migrants send home: $37 bn last year alone.

“It’s very small compared to the magnitude of the challenge. Some would say, ‘too little, too late’,” he said.

But Katie Tobin, who worked on immigration at the White House, says Ms Harris’s work has been deliberately “misconstrued and painted in a bad light“.

Ms Harris deserves credit for “a good news story” in Central America, she says. She points to statistics showing a 72% drop in immigration from just Central America between March 2021, when Ms Harris took on the role, and June 2024.

Ultimately, the view of Ms Harris’s record may simply split along party lines.

In recent months, the overall number of undocumented migrants has plummeted.

This is partly due to an executive order issued by President Biden allowing migrants in the US illegally to be deported without processing their asylum requests. There are also more legal pathways into the United States for prospective migrants.

Ms Harris’s defence is primarily to point to Trump’s resistance to getting a bipartisan deal on immigration reform through Congress.

In February, lawmakers reached the deal after intense wrangling, where Democrats ceded much ground to Republican positions. Republican leaders then blocked it at Trump’s behest, reportedly because he did not want to give the Biden administration a win.

“It was Trump himself who, for very openly political reasons, undermined an agreement that would help stabilise the border,” says Mr Zúniga. “So, the Trump campaign is kind of in the way of their own argument on this.”

Mayor Nicholls in Yuma is not moved by that defence, saying: “I think that’s a very short-term memory.”

He recalls contacting the Trump White House at a moment of crisis. He was invited to discuss immigration directly with the president and the Homeland Security secretary in a meeting where he was given more resources.

Three months later, he says “we were out of that crisis”.

“That is effective leadership on the border,” he adds.

Still, Ms Tobin says the Harris campaign should talk about it more.

“When there’s a vacuum and the vice-president doesn’t talk about immigration, it creates an opportunity for Republicans to fill the airwaves with disinformation.”

The Harris campaign responded to Trump’s first advertisement with some of its own.

The first focussed on Trump’s opposition to the immigration deal, and accused him of trying to stop her from fixing the “broken” immigration system.

A more recent one has put the spotlight on her work before the Biden administration, insisting that as California’s attorney general, Ms Harris prosecuted cartels and drug-trafficking gangs – and as president would crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.

It remains to be seen if this new stance will be enough for her to cast off the “failed border tsar” label, given that Republicans will no doubt continue to hammer home that image all the way to election day.

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A handbag made from alligator skin and tiny vials of perfume that still release a potent scent are just some of the precious artefacts recovered from the world’s most famous shipwreck – the Titanic.

The exact location of the warehouse where they are stored is a closely guarded secret, because of the value of its contents. All we can say is that it is somewhere in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.

Inside, the shelves are packed with thousands of items: from an upturned bathtub and dented porthole, to intricately etched glassware and tiny buttons.

The BBC was given a rare chance to look around the storage facility and discover the stories behind some of these objects.

“It’s a really beautiful, fashionable little bag,” says Tomasina Ray, director of collections for RMS Titanic Inc, the company that has recovered these artefacts. The US firm has the salvage rights to the ship and over the years has retrieved 5,500 items from the wreck site, a selection of which are put on display around the world.

The bag is made from alligator skin, which has survived decades in the depths of the North Atlantic. The delicate items inside have been preserved too, revealing details of the life of its owner – a third-class passenger called Marian Meanwell.

“She was a 63-year-old milliner,” says Tomasina. “And she was travelling to the US to be with her daughter who was recently widowed.”

Among the mementos inside was a faded photograph, thought to be Marian Meanwell’s mother.

There was also paperwork she would need for her new life in America, including a handwritten reference letter from her former landlord in London. It states: “We have always found Miss Meanwell to be a good tenant, prompt with payment.”

Her medical inspection card was inside too, as all third-class passengers needed to prove they weren’t bringing disease into the US. But this water-stained document reveals a tragic twist of fate.

Marian Meanwell was booked on the Majestic – another White Star Line ship. But it didn’t sail, so on the card, Majestic is crossed out and her passage shows that she was transferred to the Titanic and became one of 1,500 people to lose their lives.

“Being able to tell her story and have these objects is really important,” says Tomasina.

“Otherwise she’s just another name on the list.”

Items that belonged to survivors have also been brought back from the deep.

Tomasina opens a plastic container and a sickly-sweet smell fills the air. “It’s very potent,” she admits.

Inside are tiny vials of perfume. They are sealed, but their strong aroma escapes, even after decades on the seafloor.

“There was a perfume salesman on board and he had over 90 of these little perfume vials,” Tomasina explains.

His name was Adolphe Saalfeld and he had been travelling as a second-class passenger.

Saalfeld was one of the 700 people who survived. But with women and children prioritised during the evacuation, some men who made it off the ship were left troubled.

“He had passed by the time we found this,” says Tomasina. “But it’s my understanding that he did live with a bit of guilt – survivor’s guilt.”

Also in the collection is a champagne bottle – complete with champagne inside and a cork in the top.

“A little bit of water probably would have gotten in through the cork as it compressed and equalised the pressure. And then it just sat on the bottom of the ocean,” says Tomasina.

When the Titanic sank in 1912, after striking an iceberg, the ship split apart and its contents spilled out, creating a vast debris field.

“There are a lot of bottles on the ocean floor and a lot of stock pots and kitchen pots too, because Titanic actually broke up around one of the kitchens,” says Tomasina.

There were thousands of bottles of champagne on board. The liner’s owner wanted its first-class passengers to experience the ultimate in opulence, with sumptuous surroundings and the finest food and drink.

“It was like a floating palace and Titanic was supposed to be the most luxurious liner,” says Tomasina.

“So having champagne, having a gym, having all these amenities and these great things for the passengers would have been really important to them.”

The Titanic was on her maiden voyage, travelling from Southampton to the US, when she hit the iceberg.

The ship had advanced safety features for the time and was famously said to be unsinkable.

Tomasina shows us some of the ship’s rivets, chunky metal pins that held its thick steel plates together. There would have been more than three million of them.

“When Titanic sank, there was a theory that they were using substandard materials perhaps, and that’s what caused it to sink faster,” Tomasina explains.

Some of these rivets have been tested to see if they contain any impurities.

“There were high concentrations of slag in these, which is a glass-like material that makes them maybe a little bit more brittle in the cold,” she says.

“If these rivets were brittle, and one of the rivet heads popped off more easily, then it could have allowed the seam to open up where the iceberg hit and made it bigger than it otherwise would have been.”

Tomasina says there is still much to learn about exactly how the ship sank.

“We’re able to help look into the theories, so being able to contribute to the science and that story behind it is something that we’re very happy to do.”

Life on board was different for the social classes – even down to the cups and plates they would drink from and eat off.

A white third-class mug is simple and sturdy, with a bright red White Star logo. A second-class plate has a pretty blue floral decoration and looks a little finer. But a first-class dinner plate is made of more delicate china. It has a gold trim and, under the light, you can catch a glimpse of an intricate garland pattern.

“That pattern would have been coloured but, because it was coloured over the glaze, it was able to wash away,” says Tomasina.

The wealthy first-class passengers were given silver service for their meals – but in third class, it was a different story.

“Third-class passengers would have probably handled the china themselves – it was definitely meant to be much more stable and much more roughly handled than the other china,” explains Tomasina.

RMS Titanic Inc is the only company legally allowed to recover items from the site – it was granted this right by a US court in 1994. But it has to do this under strict conditions – the items must always remain together, so they cannot be sold off separately, and they have to be properly conserved.

Until now, all of the artefacts have been collected from the debris field. But recently the firm has stirred up controversy stating its desire to retrieve an object from the ship itself – the Marconi radio equipment which transmitted the Titanic’s distress calls on the night of the sinking.

Some believe the wreck is a grave site and should be left alone.

“Titanic is something that we want to respect,” Tomasina says in response.

“We want to make sure that we’re preserving the memory, because not everyone can go down to Titanic, and we want to be able to bring that to the public.”

More room could soon be needed on the shelves of this secret warehouse.

The company’s latest expedition to the site has involved taking millions of images of the wreck to create a detailed 3D scan.

And, as well as surveying the current condition of the Marconi radio room, the team have also been identifying objects in the debris field that they would like to retrieve in future dives.

Who knows what they will find and what untold stories each item may reveal about the ill-fated Titanic and her passengers.

Business owner Louis Ho remembers how so many of Hong Kong’s taxi drivers refused to take him and his mother – who was a wheelchair user – to hospital for routine check-ups.

“I didn’t even need the driver to carry my mum or the wheelchair. I did everything myself,” says the 64-year-old whose mother passed away in 2018.

He is one of many Hong Kongers who have a story to tell about their city’s infamous cabbies. Ask them what they like least about Hong Kong, and taxi drivers will likely be high on the list.

The most common complaints: drivers are rude, refuse to accept rides and often take longer routes so customers have to pay more.

But now the Hong Kong Taxi Council is on a mission to transform this image. They will despatch “courtesy ambassadors” armed with “best-practice” pamphlets to taxi stands.

Will that really help? That depends on who you ask.

A single campaign cannot school rude or misbehaving drivers overnight – there are about 46,000 cabbies in the city, cautions Ryan Wong, the chairman of the council.

But he is hopeful: “This is not the first time that we have done this, and the feedback from drivers has been positive.”

Hong Kongers are more sceptical. An interview clip of a taxi driver saying that passengers, rather than drivers, are the ones to be educated has gone viral in the city – many point to it as evidence that nothing will change.

Many of them are also still smarting from past experiences.

Amy Ho, in her 30s, said she stopped taking taxis a few years ago after an encounter that she found particularly unpleasant.

“I didn’t realise I had asked for a very short journey. As soon as I reached the destination, I scrambled for cash to pay,” she says.

“It was merely five seconds or so, and the driver said, ‘Can you stop dragging on, auntie? I can’t believe you need a ride for such a short distance and you can’t even afford it!’.”

IT worker Kenny Tong now only take a cab about three times a month, preferring to avoid the ordeal where he can. To hail one, he says, he often has to “bow, wait for the driver to lower the car window” and check if his destination is on the driver’s route for the day.

“Some taxi drivers grumble throughout the journey after I have boarded,” he adds.

He also finds it frustrating when drivers do not use GPS and ask him how to reach the destination – even though they have “multiple phones on the dashboard”.

Most disgruntled passengers do not file complaints because it’s time-consuming. Still, there there were about 11,500 complaints last year – a 11% increase from 2019, according to the Transport Advisory Committee. Only a tiny fraction were prosecuted.

Then there is the problem of dishonest drivers – with tourists especially vulnerable.

In early July, a visitor from the China’s eastern province of Zhejiang took to social media to complain that she was only given HK$44 ($5.6; £4.5) in change after giving a cabbie HK$1,000 for a HK$56 ride. She reported the incident to the police, but couldn’t get her money back because of insufficient evidence.

But poor behaviour is only a symptom of the deeper issues that beset the city’s taxi industry, which is struggling with high costs, increased competition and bureaucracy.

There are about 18,000 taxi licenses in the city, and this number has been largely capped since 1994, apart from 2016 when just 25 licenses were issued. Many holders see the licenses as an investment and rent them to drivers.

Leung Tat Chong – who has worked as a taxi driver for more than two decades – says the rent of the licenses has kept rising and a driver has to pay about HK$500 for a 12-hour daytime shift – which does not include fuel. On a typical day, a driver can make HK$500 to HK$800.

“We can only do more business during rush hours, and sometimes we wait for up to 25 minutes and there is not even one single passenger,” he says. “To make a living, some drivers are not as patient and they have no capacity to improve their services.”

This is not an excuse for poor behaviour, he adds, but the “reality” of the industry.

Taxis also face intense competition from Uber which has been hugely popular since its entry into the Hong Kong market in 2014. The company says half of the city’s 7.5 million population have used it at least once.

The taxi industry has called on the government to crack down on the platform, which remains officially illegal in the city, arguing that it is unfair because Uber drivers are not subjected to the same laws – including needing special licences to run.

In late May, some taxi drivers even launched a vigilante sting operation to expose Uber drivers – but that attracted backlash from the public, many of whom say they prefer the ride hailing app precisely because of the issues they have with cab drivers.

“We underestimated the impact of ride-hailing apps,” says Chau Kwok-keung, the chairman of the Hong Kong Taxi and Public Light Bus Association. “Passengers are willing to pay more for a better riding experience.”

While Mr Chau is against Uber, he concedes that there are fewer conflicts on that platform because drivers can pick the passengers and fares are agreed before the journey. He also admits that the industry has been slow to adapt to online hailing systems and digital payment. Most taxi drivers still only accept cash.

The taxi industry also struggles to attract new blood. The average age of drivers is close to 60. Mr Chau argues that the lack of prospects is an important factor, as taxi fare has only been raised four times in the past decade. In 2023, the average income of an urban taxi driver was about HK$22,000, about 10% higher than the city’s median income. Hong Kong ranks 45th in terms of taxi fare in the world, according to living-cost online database Numbeo. Mr Chau says it’s very low considering Hong Kong is an expensive city.

“Many think that only poor people become cabbies, and it’s the last resort when one meets financial difficulties,” says Mr Leung, who thinks that the government should tighten requirements and provide more training for taxi drivers to improve the profession’s image.

But big changes are afoot for the city’s taxi industry.

A demerit-point system will take effect in September, and misbehaviour could lead to a license suspension after a court conviction.

A taxi fleet system will be introduced and authorities have issued five new licenses. It will allow flexible pricing, but in return, these fleets, which include 3,500 taxis, have to provide online booking, personal rating systems and digital payment.

For now, drivers and passengers say they are waiting to see if these reforms can take hold.

“If we provide good service, the industry will grow and there will be more passengers,” says Mr Leung.

If you fluff a joke in a TikTok, you’ve always got the option of deleting the video. Not so much live on stage at the world’s biggest performance arts festival.

But for a group of acts who’ve gained a large following on the app, that hasn’t put them off taking their sets offline at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

“All that time posting on TikTok helped me build my confidence,” says Courtney Buchner.

“Having that online platform where I could try things out and feel a little bit safer,” she tells BBC Newsbeat.

TikTok bosses noticed many people like Courtney trying to take their comedy from feeds to theatres this year and the platform has been announced as a sponsor of the festival.

Courtney has had more than a million likes on her TikTok videos, which often include sketches around women’s football.

She didn’t expect to be at this year’s festival but when a slot opened up, she threw herself in.

“Now I’m ready to say to an audience: ‘I’m opening this up to you and to live reactions’.

“Rather than having a reaction in your room, and I don’t get to see it, and you might not like it, and just swipe by,” she says.

Although Courtney says it’s not something she’s personally experienced, she knows there can be some snobbery about performers who’ve cut their teeth online rather than honing their craft in the “real world”.

“There’s that feeling of insecurity that you do have something to prove, that you can move your audience from being online to being fresh and alive in a theatre space,” she says.

“You do hear things about, ‘They’re only getting X, Y and Z because of their following’.

“My answer to that is to get that following took time, patience and talent.”

Chris Hall says his online fans have been surprised by what he’s put on for Fringe so far.

“Some people come and they go, ‘That’s not what we were expecting at all but I really liked it’.

“Hopefully what people like from the [online] content, they see carried through to the stand-up.”

Chris started sharing on TikTok during the coronavirus lockdown and, like Courtney, he says it helped build his confidence, and build a following of almost 600,000.

His videos where he and his sister Elizabeth pretend to be backing singers have earned him thousands of likes and caught the eye of some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.

“Shania [Twain] was our biggest,” Chris tells Newsbeat.

“That really got the ball – not even the ball rolling. It got the ball catapulted into the stratosphere.”

But he’s left the backing singers skit at home, preferring to offer audiences something different.

“It’s so nice to meet people in real life,” he says, comparing performing on stage to performing online.

“To get that in-person, live feedback.”

Abi Clarke’s journey has been the opposite way round to Chris and Courtney, starting her career in stand-up offline and then moving on to social media.

“I didn’t want to be a social media person,” she says, but adds: “You have to be now.”

Abi now has almost a million followers on TikTok and more than 27 million likes.

Since becoming popular online, she still has to figure out how to translate her online comedy to a real life audience.

“It’s scary. I feel like I’m introducing my school friends to my work friends.

“They’re different forms of performance and they’re different vibes,” she says. “But it’s still me.”

With so many opportunities to go viral, Abi feels using social media to launch a more sustainable live career is a “natural progression” for comedians.

“I think people just want the live genre to be respected and people not to think that they can just come and do a show on the cuff,” she says.

For those thinking of making the leap, she says there are some key differences to overcome when adapting your work.

On social media, “you can be much more niche”, Abi says, and chances are people with similar interests will find you.

But at somewhere like the Fringe, “you don’t know who’s going to come through that door… you have to make sure it’s funny for – hopefully – anyone”.

“You also have to keep their attention for an hour,” she adds, compared to short skits online.

It’s harder “but so much more fun”.

“Social media gets lonely… it can get you down.

“Nothing compares to people laughing live and people being in a room.

“A laugh emoji is never gonna match up to that.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Chinese car maker Zeekr says its new electric vehicle (EV) batteries charge faster than any of its rivals, including industry leaders Tesla and BYD.

The firm claims its upgraded batteries can be charged from 10% to 80% capacity in 10 and a half minutes using its ultra-fast charging stations.

In comparison, Elon Musk’s Tesla says a 15 minute charge allows its Model 3 to cover 175 miles (282km), a little under half the car’s full range.

Zeekr’s 2025 007 sedan, which will be available from next week, will be its first vehicle to have the new battery.

The battery performs well even in cold weather charging from 10% to 80% of its capacity in less than half an hour at temperatures as low as -10C, the company also said.

BBC News has contacted Tesla and BYD to request a response to Zeekr’s announcement.

Tu Le, founder and managing director of consultancy firm Sino Auto Insights told the BBC: “Tesla’s charging technology is not industry leading anymore and has not been for some time.”

“These bold claims by Zeekr are believable, but more importantly even if it’s not the fastest charging EV battery, being one for the fastest is still quite a leap for them”.

“The competition in China is incredibly fierce and while brands like BYD prioritise scale and sales, brands like Zeekr, Li [Auto] and Nio are focused on maximising the charging experience,” said Mark Rainford, a China-based car industry commentator.

“Zeekr’s parent company, Geely, is pretty much a vertically integrated business… they have the resources to do this,” he added.

Geely owns several brands, including UK-based luxury sports car brand Lotus and Sweden’s Volvo.

In May, Zeekr’s shares started trading on the New York Stock Exchange, marking the first major US market debut by a Chinese company since 2021.

The shares are currently trading 27% below the price set in its initial public offering (IPO).

The listing came just days before the Biden administration announced major tariff hikes on Chinese-made electric cars, solar panels, steel and other goods.

The White House said the measures, which included a 100% border tax on EVs from China, were a response to unfair policies and intended to protect US jobs.

Officials in the US, the European Union and other major car markets have grown increasingly concerned about the rapid overseas expansion of Chinese EV companies.

Fans were taken by surprise after Ed Sheeran broke off from his tour to sign autographs at a supermarket on Tuesday.

The catch? He signed them in hot sauce.

Hundreds of fans flocked to the Sainsbury’s in Hertfordshire, where Sheeran signed food items including a block of cheese and broccoli from a van in the car park.

The Grammy award-winning star was promoting his hot sauce brand, Tingly Ted’s, which is sold at the supermarket chain.

It may sound like fiction, but that was the strange reality for some shoppers who were in the perfect place, at the perfect time.

Fans were given an hour’s notice to make their way to the store after Sheeran announced the pop-up via social media and his fan email newsletter.

One of these fans was Harry Barnes, who spotted the email in his inbox and thought he would take a look in case Sheeran made an appearance.

Speaking to Babs Michel on BBC Three Counties Radio, Mr Barnes said only a few fans had been waiting by the time he got there – but once word got out that Sheeran was at the van, hundreds flocked to the car park.

“I’m a massive Ed Sheeran fan,” he told the BBC.

“The only problem was – I was in a Justin Timberlake t-shirt.”

Mr Barnes had been to a Justin Timberlake concert the night before, and was about to make his way home when he stopped at the supermarket.

He said he had thought better than to ask Sheeran to sign the Timberlake t-shirt. Nor did he have a photograph.

“I didn’t have anything worth signing,” he explained. “I had this block of cheese that they’d given and Ed was happy to sign it with his sauce, as long as I ate the block of cheese with his signature on it.

“I think I had three bites.”

Mr Barnes wasn’t the only one who left with an unusual signed item – the shape of them included lettuce, broccoli, bread loaves and a vinyl record, all signed with Sheeran’s special pen.

A listing for a roll of paper towels, supposedly signed by Sheeran at the event, has already made its way on to an online selling platform for £1,000.

Fans were also given free slices of pizza to try out the hot sauce.

“It was super exciting popping into Sainsbury’s and surprising some shoppers,” Sheeran told PA news agency.

Satwinder Hayre, the manager at the Sainsbury’s in London Colney, said she was delighted that Sheeran had stopped by, saying the singer’s visit “certainly gave our customers shivers!”

It should be noted that other hot sauces are available for purchase, as are other supermarkets for cheese or flowers of course.

The wreck of a ship which sank more than 200 years ago has been granted special protection by the government.

The Earl of Abergavenny sank off the coast of Weymouth, Dorset, with the loss of some 250 lives, in what is considered one of the UK’s worst maritime disasters.

It was carrying more than 60 chests of silver bullion that have never been found.

John Wordsworth, the brother of renowned Romantic poet William Wordsworth, was the ship’s captain.

The 1,300-tonne ship set sail from Portsmouth to Bengal and China in 1805 but during a storm it struck a sandbank and foundered about a mile off the shores of Weymouth.

On the recommendation of Historic England, the government gave the wreck special protected status on Wednesday.

This means the site, which includes planking, frames, fixtures and fittings, can be dived on but should remain untouched.

“We can’t protect shipwrecks against tides and ocean currents, but we can protect them against human activity”, Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, told Radio 4’s Today programme.

David Carter from the Portland Museum in Dorset was among those who discovered the wreck and welcomed its new protected status.

He described the Earl of Abergavenny as the “finest and largest” of the East India Company ships. The ship was built to collect tea from China, Mr Wilson said.

The East India Company had a close association with the Wordsworth family, with Mr Wilson telling the BBC that John Wordsworth embarked on a life at sea to help support his brother’s writing career.

After John Wordsworth’s death, the poet’s style “became a lot bleaker”, the historian said.

References to John can be found in some of his brother’s works, such as in The Character of the Happy Warrior, Stepping Westward and Elegiac Stanzas.

John captained two successful voyages on the Earl of Abergavenny to China before the tragic incident which took his life and that of around 250 crewmen and passengers.

“It was absolutely a national tragedy,” Mr Wilson said.

The ship’s cargo was estimated to be worth £70,000 at the time – approximately £7.5 million today.

Many of the artefacts from the wreck are housed at the Portland Museum.

A famous 190-million-year-old rock formation in southern Utah known as the “Double Arch” has collapsed, according to national park officials.

The popular natural phenomenon – which covered Lake Powell in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area – crumbled last week, according to the National Park Service.

No one was injured when the rock formation fell down at the popular hiking spot.

Park rangers said changing water levels and erosion may have contributed to the collapse.

“[T]his event serves as a reminder of our responsibility and need to protect the mineral resources surrounding Lake Powell,” said Glen Canyon National Recreation Area superintendent Michelle Kerns.

The rocks that formed Double Arch – also known as the “toilet bowl” because of the large hole in the formation – consisted of fine-grained Navajo sandstone from the late Triassic to early Jurassic periods, the National Park Service said.

But over time, the formation had begun to crumble and erode with wind and rain, the agency said.

Ms Kerns said the rock formation may have been influenced or damaged by “manmade interventions”.

Water levels in Lake Powell have fallen steadily since 1999 due to global warming that has made the western US hotter and drier, according to NASA. Water levels rose this year after reaching historic lows in 2023, but have not fully rebounded to 1999, when the lake was near capacity.

The rock formation was a popular hiking destination. In 2023, over 5 million people visited the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, which spans 1.25 million acres in Utah and Arizona.

Several people took to social media to mourn the loss of the famed arches. One user posted a video of the rock formation hovering above Lake Powell just a day before the collapse. Another said she had a picture of her mother floating below the rock in an inner tube from 1969.

“Sad to see it go,” she posted.

Utah’s parks are home to many arch-like rock formations, including in Arches and Zion National Park.

A murder investigation has been opened into Bangladesh’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina over the police killing of a man during civil unrest.

Six other top figures in the previous government are also being investigated following weeks of deadly unrest in the capital Dhaka.

Ms Hasina resigned earlier this month, fleeing to neighbouring India, as calls grew for her to stand down.

Just hours after the case was filed against her, she called for an investigation into the protests that led to her resignation.

In her first public statement since she left the country, she asked for those involved to “be identified and punished accordingly”.

More than 400 people were killed in weeks of student demonstrations culminating in the demands against Ms Hasina. Many of them were shot by the police, on her orders.

Mamun Mia, a lawyer who brought the case against the former prime minister on behalf of a private citizen, said the court in Dhaka had ordered police to accept “the murder case against the accused persons”.

This is the first step in a criminal investigation under Bangladeshi law.

Businessman Amir Hamza applied to bring the murder case in July, after a local grocer Abu Saeed was shot in the head while crossing the road.

He told a court that on 19 July, students were holding a peaceful protest, alleging police had fired indiscriminately on the crowd, according to BBC Bangla.

Mr Hamza said he was not related to Mr Saeed but approached the court because the grocer’s family did not have the finances to file the case.

“I am the first ordinary citizen who showed the courage to take this legal step against Sheikh Hasina for her crimes. I will see the case to an end,” he told Reuters news agency.

Magistrate Rajesh Chowdhury ordered the police to investigate the case, the first to be brought against Ms Hasina since the protests started.

The former Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader is among those being investigated.

Ms Hasina’s government, which was in power for 15 years, was accused of widespread human rights violations and dogged by allegations of rampant corruption.

The student protests began in early July, starting out as peaceful demands to scrap quotas in civil service jobs, before transforming into a wider movement which toppled the government.

Ms Hasina urged police to clamp down hard on the protestors, referring to them as “not students but terrorists who are out to destabilise the nation”.

The recently formed new government contains many of the protestors, and is helmed by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Ms Hasina will return to the country when elections are declared, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said.

The Australian city of Melbourne has banned rental electronic scooters with officials saying they posed unacceptable safety risks.

The U-turn by the city’s council comes after it first welcomed the scooters in February 2022, saying they would operate a two-year trial.

However, hundreds of accidents since then have sparked complaints and outrage from the public.

Melbourne’s mayor said he was “fed up” with the bad behaviour of some scooter users.

“Too many people [are] riding on footpaths. People don’t park them properly. They’re tipped, they’re scattered around the city like confetti, like rubbish, creating tripping hazards,” Nicholas Reece told local radio station 3AW.

Melbourne is just the latest city in the world to remove hire scooters – which can go at up to 26km/h (16mph) – after a brief period of operation. The French capital Paris outlawed them last September – Mr Reece said he wanted to copy “the Paris option”.

City councillors voted 6-4 on Tuesday evening local time to ban the scooters almost immediately.

Operators Lime and Neuron have been ordered to remove the scooters within 30 days.

The companies still had six months left on their contracts to operate the vehicles and had been campaigning heavily in recent weeks, urging users to petition the council.

Both companies said they had invested significantly in recent months to improve safety and regulations around the use of scooters – with Neuron saying it was planning on installing AI cameras on scooters to prevent misuse.

A spokesman for the company decried the city council’s blanket ban on Tuesday, saying they had been in discussions with city officials to introduce measures like restricting the scooter use to less congested parts of the city, or setting up riding zones.

“This goes over and above the reforms announced by the state government,” Jayden Bryant from Neuron had earlier told Australian media.

“It is very odd that [a different] tabled proposal for the introduction of new e-scooter technology can change to become a proposal for a ban.”

About 1,500 Lime and Neuron scooters had been distributed across the city since the trial’s inception in February 2022.

Melbourne city council had previously reported that scooters had cut the city’s carbon emissions by more than 400 tonnes and encouraged greater take-up of public transport.

But there has also been growing evidence of the scheme’s flaws. One of the city’s main hospitals, the Royal Melbourne hospital, published a report in December 2023 which found close to 250 scooter-riders presented at its emergency department with injuries in 2022. A majority of these involved factors such as intoxication, speeding and not wearing a helmet.

A hospital spokesman said e-scooter accidents had even caused deaths and brain damage, with injuries mainly among younger patients.

Pakistan’s former spymaster – who was once tipped for the army’s top job – has been taken into military custody.

Lt Gen Faiz Hameed has been accused of abusing his power and raiding a private property development business during his time as head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

It is incredibly rare for someone of Gen Hameed’s rank to be arrested in Pakistan, and has sparked widespread speculation, with many linking the move to his close ties with former prime minister Imran Khan.

He led the ISI during Mr Khan’s administration, from 2019 to 2021, before taking early retirement in December 2022.

The two were understood to be very close during that period.

The army’s official statement said the arrest of Gen Hameed was ordered by the Supreme Court, and that the military had now started “the process of Field General Court Martial”.

A court martial is a legal military hearing.

It also noted there had also been “multiple instances of violation” of the Pakistan Army Act since his retirement.

In an interview with the BBC, retired officer Lt Gen Talat Hussain described the move as “unusual” and predicted that many more arrests could follow.

According to some analysts, the arrest could be seen as part of the military’s drive to hold people accountable within the institution.

The arrest of such a high-ranking officer signals that no one is beyond scrutiny, according to Senator Irfan Siddiqi, a close ally of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

However, others suggest that this may be more about settling old scores, with indications that the current army leadership and General Hameed did not see eye to eye.

There is also speculation that the arrest reflects a willingness to take action against those who were seen as backing Imran Khan, even if they were outside the political arena.

Mr Khan, who has been imprisoned for more than a year and is facing numerous charges, was once closely aligned with Pakistan’s military leadership.

Opposition figures have previously accused Gen Hameed of being responsible for “selecting” Mr Khan for office, and was apparently so confident he was going to be named army chief he boasted of it, according to the BBC’s former Pakistan correspondent.

Mr Khan’s PTI party has appeared to shrug off speculation the arrest could be linked to them, with chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan describing the military’s actions as an internal matter.

The government has welcomed the arrest.

Gen Hameed could not be reached for comment.

Early on Friday morning, a 31-year-old female trainee doctor retired to sleep in a seminar hall after a gruelling day at one of India’s oldest hospitals.

It was the last time she was seen alive.

The next morning, her colleagues discovered her half-naked body on the podium, bearing extensive injuries. Police later arrested a hospital volunteer worker in connection with what they say is a case of rape and murder at Kolkata’s 138-year-old RG Kar Medical College.

Tens of thousands of women in Kolkata and across West Bengal state are expected to participate in a ‘Reclaim the Night’ march at midnight on Wednesday, demanding the “independence to live in freedom and without fear”. The march takes place just before India’s Independence Day on Thursday. Outraged doctors have struck work both in the city and across India, demanding a strict federal law to protect them.

The tragic incident has again cast a spotlight on the violence against doctors and nurses in the country. Reports of doctors, regardless of gender, being assaulted by patients and their relatives have gained widespread attention. Women – who make up nearly 30% of India’s doctors and 80% of the nursing staff – are more vulnerable than their male colleagues.

The crime in the Kolkata hospital last week exposed the alarming security risks faced by the medical staff in many of India’s state-run health facilities.

At RG Kar Hospital, which sees over 3,500 patients daily, the overworked trainee doctors – some working up to 36 hours straight – had no designated rest rooms, forcing them to seek rest in a third-floor seminar room.

Reports indicate that the arrested suspect, a volunteer worker with a troubled past, had unrestricted access to the ward and was captured on CCTV. Police allege that no background checks were conducted on the volunteer.

“The hospital has always been our first home; we only go home to rest. We never imagined it could be this unsafe. Now, after this incident, we’re terrified,” says Madhuparna Nandi, a junior doctor at Kolkata’s 76-year-old National Medical College.

Dr Nandi’s own journey highlights how female doctors in India’s government hospitals have become resigned to working in conditions that compromise their security.

At her hospital, where she is a resident in gynaecology and obstetrics, there are no designated rest rooms and separate toilets for female doctors.

“I use the patients’ or the nurses’ toilets if they allow me. When I work late, I sometimes sleep in an empty patient bed in the ward or in a cramped waiting room with a bed and basin,” Dr Nandi told me.

She says she feels insecure even in the room where she rests after 24-hour shifts that start with outpatient duty and continue through ward rounds and maternity rooms.

One night in 2021, during the peak of the Covid pandemic, some men barged into her room and woke her by touching her, demanding, “Get up, get up. See our patient.”

“I was completely shaken by the incident. But we never imagined it would come to a point where a doctor could be raped and murdered in the hospital,” Dr Nandi says.

What happened on Friday was not an isolated incident. The most shocking case remains that of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at a prominent Mumbai hospital, who was left in a persistent vegetative state after being raped and strangled by a ward attendant in 1973. She died in 2015, after 42 years of severe brain damage and paralysis. More recently, in Kerala, Vandana Das, a 23-year-old medical intern, was fatally stabbed with surgical scissors by a drunken patient last year.

In overcrowded government hospitals with unrestricted access, doctors often face mob fury from patients’ relatives after a death or over demands for immediate treatment. Kamna Kakkar, an anaesthetist, remembers a harrowing incident during a night shift in an intensive care unit (ICU) during the pandemic in 2021 at her hospital in Haryana in northern India.

“I was the lone doctor in the ICU when three men, flaunting a politician’s name, forced their way in, demanding a much in-demand controlled drug. I gave in to protect myself, knowing the safety of my patients was at stake,” Dr Kakkar told me.

Namrata Mitra, a Kolkata-based pathologist who studied at the RG Kar Medical College, says her doctor father would often accompany her to work because she felt unsafe.

“During my on-call duty, I took my father with me. Everyone laughed, but I had to sleep in a room tucked away in a long, dark corridor with a locked iron gate that only the nurse could open if a patient arrived,” Dr Mitra wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend.

“I’m not ashamed to admit I was scared. What if someone from the ward – an attendant, or even a patient – tried something? I took advantage of the fact that my father was a doctor, but not everyone has that privilege.”

When she was working in a public health centre in a district in West Bengal, Dr Mitra spent nights in a dilapidated one-storey building that served as the doctor’s hostel.

“From dusk, a group of boys would gather around the house, making lewd comments as we went in and out for emergencies. They would ask us to check their blood pressure as an excuse to touch us and they would peek through the broken bathroom windows,” she wrote.

Years later, during an emergency shift at a government hospital, “a group of drunk men passed by me, creating a ruckus, and one of them even groped me”, Dr Mitra said. “When I tried to complain, I found the police officers dozing off with their guns in hand.”

Things have worsened over the years, says Saraswati Datta Bodhak, a pharmacologist at a government hospital in West Bengal’s Bankura district. “Both my daughters are young doctors and they tell me that hospital campuses in the state are overrun by anti-social elements, drunks and touts,” she says. Dr Bodhak recalls seeing a man with a gun roaming around a top government hospital in Kolkata during a visit.

India lacks a stringent federal law to protect healthcare workers. Although 25 states have some laws to prevent violence against them, convictions are “almost non-existent”, RV Asokan, president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), an organisation of doctors, told me. A 2015 survey by IMA found that 75% of doctors in India have faced some form of violence at work. “Security in hospitals is almost absent,” he says. “One reason is that nobody thinks of hospitals as conflict zones.”

Some states like Haryana have deployed private bouncers to strengthen security at government hospitals. In 2022, the federal government asked the states to deploy trained security forces for sensitive hospitals, install CCTV cameras, set up quick reaction teams, restrict entry to “undesirable individuals” and file complaints against offenders. Nothing much has happened, clearly.

Even the protesting doctors don’t seem to be very hopeful. “Nothing will change… The expectation will be that doctors should work round the clock and endure abuse as a norm,” says Dr Mitra. It is a disheartening thought.

Boxer Imane Khelif has filed a lawsuit over alleged cyberbullying during the Paris 2024 Olympics, which reportedly names author JK Rowling and X owner Elon Musk.

The Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, despite being disqualified from last year’s World Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA), after she was reported to have failed gender eligibility tests in 2023.

However, the International Olympic Committee strongly defended Khelif’s right to compete and ruled her to be eligible.

Her lawyer Nabil Boudi told Variety on Tuesday that Musk and Rowling would be named in the lawsuit, following comments they made on social media.

Khelif’s participation was widely discussed online, after Italian boxer Angela Carini abandoned her Olympic bout against her after 46 seconds.

Paris public prosecutor’s office told news agency AFP on Wednesday that they had launched a cyberbullying probe, following a complaint by Khelif.

However, a prominent French legal blogger wrote on X that it is unlikely Mr Musk or Ms Rowling would face prosecution, as French penal law doesn’t apply to acts committed outside of France against foreign nationals.

But prosecutors could press charges against those who sent messages on French soil.

Khelif, along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, was cleared to compete in the women’s boxing in Paris, having been disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships for failing to meet eligibility criteria.

But the IOC took a different view, strongly defending the two boxers.

“This is a question of justice: women must be allowed to take part in women’s competitions. And the two are women,” IOC president Thomas Bach said.

X CEO Mr Musk and Harry Potter author Ms Rowling both posted comments about the boxer, with Ms Rowling saying Khelif was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head” following the fight with Carini.

Mr Musk shared a post from swimmer Riley Gaines which said “men don’t belong in women’s sports”.

BBC News has contacted representatives for Mr Musk and Ms Rowling for comment.

Following her win, Khelif said “attacks” over her gender eligibility gave her victory against Chinese world champion Yang Liu a “special taste” after she won Olympic women’s boxing gold, a year after being disqualified from the World Championships.

“I am fully qualified to take part in this competition,” said 25-year-old Khelif. “I am a woman like any other woman.

“I was born a woman. I have lived as a woman. I competed as a woman – there is no doubt about that.”

A day after abandoning her own fight with Khelif, Carini said she “wanted to apologise” to her opponent for how she handled the moments afterwards, when she declined to shake hands with Khelif.

Yang had also been due to face Khelif in the final of last year’s World Championship – a title Yang went on to win – but Khelif was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) before they met.

The IBA said Khelif and Lin “failed to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA regulations”.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) allowed them to compete, raised doubts about the tests and strongly criticised the IBA.

A chaotic news conference held subsequently by the IBA did little to clear the confusion around Khelif and Lin’s bans.

Chief executive Chris Roberts said the pair had “chromosome tests”, while president Umar Kremlev appeared to suggest the tests determined the fighters’ testosterone levels.

The BBC has been unable to determine what the eligibility tests consisted of.

The Russian-led IBA was stripped of its status as amateur boxing’s governing body by the IOC in 2019 because of fears over its governance and regulation.

Chinese car maker Zeekr says its new electric vehicle (EV) batteries charge faster than any of its rivals, including industry leaders Tesla and BYD.

The firm claims its upgraded batteries can be charged from 10% to 80% capacity in 10 and a half minutes using its ultra-fast charging stations.

In comparison, Elon Musk’s Tesla says a 15 minute charge allows its Model 3 to cover 175 miles (282km), a little under half the car’s full range.

Zeekr’s 2025 007 sedan, which will be available from next week, will be its first vehicle to have the new battery.

The battery performs well even in cold weather charging from 10% to 80% of its capacity in less than half an hour at temperatures as low as -10C, the company also said.

BBC News has contacted Tesla and BYD to request a response to Zeekr’s announcement.

Tu Le, founder and managing director of consultancy firm Sino Auto Insights told the BBC: “Tesla’s charging technology is not industry leading anymore and has not been for some time.”

“These bold claims by Zeekr are believable, but more importantly even if it’s not the fastest charging EV battery, being one for the fastest is still quite a leap for them”.

“The competition in China is incredibly fierce and while brands like BYD prioritise scale and sales, brands like Zeekr, Li [Auto] and Nio are focused on maximising the charging experience,” said Mark Rainford, a China-based car industry commentator.

“Zeekr’s parent company, Geely, is pretty much a vertically integrated business… they have the resources to do this,” he added.

Geely owns several brands, including UK-based luxury sports car brand Lotus and Sweden’s Volvo.

In May, Zeekr’s shares started trading on the New York Stock Exchange, marking the first major US market debut by a Chinese company since 2021.

The shares are currently trading 27% below the price set in its initial public offering (IPO).

The listing came just days before the Biden administration announced major tariff hikes on Chinese-made electric cars, solar panels, steel and other goods.

The White House said the measures, which included a 100% border tax on EVs from China, were a response to unfair policies and intended to protect US jobs.

Officials in the US, the European Union and other major car markets have grown increasingly concerned about the rapid overseas expansion of Chinese EV companies.

A Thai court has dismissed Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin for appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who was once jailed.

The Constitutional Court ruled that Mr Srettha had violated the “rules on ethics” with “the display of defiant behaviour”.

The 62-year-old Srettha, who has been in power for less than a year, is the third PM in 16 years to be removed by the same court.

He will be replaced by an interim leader until Thailand’s parliament convenes to elect a new prime minister.

“I’m confident in my honesty … I feel sorry, but I’m not saying I disagree with the ruling,” he said at a press conference shortly after the ruling. The court’s ruling is final and cannot be appealed.

Mr Srettha’s dismissal means he has now gone the way of so many other parties and administrations in Thailand – felled by the disproportionate power of the country’s constitutional court.

Politics in Thailand is not known for its ethics; bribery is commonplace and ministers with more serious convictions have been allowed to serve in the past.

Most people in Thailand will see this as a political verdict, though exactly who was pushing for it is not yet clear.

In May the court had accepted a petition filed by some 40 senators asking to remove the PM from his position over his appointment of Pichit Chuenban – who was previously sentenced to six months in jail for attempted bribery.

On Wednesday, five of the nine judges ruled that Mr Srettha had indeed violated the ethics of his office by appointing a lawyer who had a criminal conviction to his cabinet, despite him quitting after just 19 days.

The vote for a new prime minister will involve plenty of backroom bargaining, while Thailand struggles to revive its faltering economy.

Hopes that the country was now putting the political turmoil, including two military coups that have shaken it for the past two decades, have proved premature.

Mr Srettha became prime minister only last August, ending nine years of military-dominated governments in Thailand.

His appointment too was the result of a political bargain that froze out the young, reformist Move Forward party, which had won the most seats and votes in last year’s general election.

It was a stunning victory that raised hopes for a fresh start for Thailand but Move Forward was blocked from forming the government by the military-appointed senate.

The election’s second-biggest winner Pheu Thai then struck a deal with other conservative parties to form a ruling coalition without Move Forward – and Mr Srettha found himself at the helm.

Last week, the constitutional court dissolved the Move Forward party for making unconstitutional campaign promises and banned 11 party leaders from politics for 10 years.

Disney World is arguing a man cannot sue it over the death of his wife because of terms he signed up to in a free trial of Disney+.

Jeffrey Piccolo filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney after his wife died in 2023 from a severe allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant at the theme park.

However, Disney argues its terms of use, which Mr Piccolo agreed to when creating his Disney account in 2019, means they have to settle out of court.

Representatives for Disney and Jeffrey Piccolo have been contacted for comment.

Mr Piccolo alleges that the restaurant at Disney World – in Orlando, Florida – that he and his wife dined at did not take enough care over her severe allergies to dairy and nuts, despite being repeatedly told about them.

Dr Kanokporn Tangsuan died in hospital later that day, 5 October 2023.

According to the legal filing, her death was confirmed by a medical examiner “as a result of anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nut in her system.”

He is suing Disney for a sum in excess of $50,000 plus legal costs.

Disney wants the case in the courts to be halted, and for the dispute to be resolved out of court, in a process called arbitration.

The entertainment company argues it cannot be taken to court because, in its terms of use, it says users agree to settle any disputes with the company via arbitration.

It says Mr Piccolo agreed to these terms of use when he signed up to a one month free trial of its streaming service, Disney+, in 2019.

Disney adds that Mr Piccolo accepted these terms again when using his Disney account to buy tickets for the theme park in 2023.

Mr Piccolo’s lawyers call Disney’s arguments “preposterous” and “inane”.

They say Disney’s case “is based on the incredible argument that any person who signs up for a Disney+ account, even free trials that are not extended beyond the trial period, will have forever waived the right to a jury trial”.

The argument that this can be extended to wrongful death or personal injury claims “borders on the surreal,” according to the legal filing.

They also argue that Mr Piccolo agreed to the Disney terms of use for himself, whereas he is now acting on behalf of his deceased wife, who never agreed to the terms.

“Disney is pushing the envelope of contract law,” says Ernest Aduwa, partner at Stokoe Partnership Solicitors, who are not involved in the proceedings.

“The courts will have to consider, on balance, if the arbitration clause in a contract for a streaming service can really be applied to as serious an allegation of wrongful death through negligence at a theme park,” he says.

He adds: “Disney’s argument that accepting their terms and conditions for one product covers all interactions with that company is novel and potentially far reaching.”

Jibreel Tramboo, barrister at Church Court Chambers, says the terms in the Disney+ trial are a “weak argument for Disney to rely on”.

However, he says, the clause in the ticket purchase from 2023 may be a stronger case, “as there is a similar arbitration clause”.

“That may permit Disney to stay the case for arbitration,” he says, “although there are many other threads that may prevent them going to arbitration given the delicate circumstances in this case.”

Mr Piccolo wants the case to go in front of a jury in a court of law.

Disney’s motion to take the case out of court and decided by arbitration will be heard in front of a Florida judge in October.

Arbitration means the dispute is overseen by a neutral third party who is not a judge.

It is usually a quicker and cheaper process than a court case.

“Disney understandably may want to benefit from the privacy and confidentiality that arbitration brings, rather than having a wrongful death suit heard in public with the associated publicity,” says Jamie Cartwright, partner at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys.

The six-tonne Altar Stone at the heart of Stonehenge came from the far north of Scotland rather than south-west Wales as previously thought, new analysis has found.

The discovery shows the construction of Stonehenge was a far greater collaborative effort than scientists realised.

It also means that the ancient monument, near Salisbury in south-west England, was built with stones from all parts of Great Britain.

The findings suggest Neolithic Britain was a far more connected and advanced society than earlier evidence indicated.

The distance between Stonehenge and the far north of Scotland is about 700km (434 miles).

The research was led by a Welsh PhD student, Anthony Clarke, now working at Curtin University in Western Australia.

Such is the importance of the discovery that it has been published in one of the world’s leading scientific journals, Nature, which is an enormous achievement for an apprentice researcher.

But it is a bittersweet moment for the young Welshman, who was born in Pembrokeshire, where the Altar Stone was until now thought to have come from.

“I don’t think I’ll be forgiven by people back home,” he joked to BBC News. “It will be a great loss for Wales!”

But Mr Clarke points out that the remaining stones in the central horseshoe, which are known as bluestones, are from Wales and the larger stones in the outer circle are from England.

“We’ve got to give the Scots something!” he said.

“But on a serious note, Stonehenge seems to be this great British endeavour involving all the different people from all over the island,” he said.

The bluestones at Stonehenge were identified as coming from the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire in 1923, by Welsh geologist Henry Herbert Thomas. The central Altar Stone was made of a different rock but always assumed to have come from the same area, until 20 years ago when scientists first began to question its origins.

Last year, researchers including Prof Nick Pearce from Aberystwyth in Wales, of all places, concluded that the Alter Stone could not have come from Wales. But its origin had remained a mystery, until now.

“It blew our socks off when we discovered it was from north-east Scotland,” Prof Pearce, who was also involved in the current discovery, told BBC News.

“It was a shock to say the least. Coming from that distance, more than 700km, was remarkable.

“The Neolithic people must have been pretty-well connected, far more connected than people give them credit for. They must have been very well organised”.

The breakthrough was made by the team at Curtin university who analysed the chemical composition of fragments of rock that had fallen off the Altar Stone and dated them. The composition and date are unique to rocks from different parts of the world, rather like a fingerprint.

The Australian team had access to one of the most comprehensive global rock fingerprint databases and found the best match was from the Orcadian Basin, which includes the Caithness, Orkney, and Moray Firth regions of north-eastern Scotland.

Construction at Stonehenge began 5,000 years ago, with changes and additions over the next two millennia. Most of the bluestones are believed to have been the first stones erected at the site.

Dr Robert Ixer, from University College London, who was also involved in the study, described the result as “shocking”.

“The work prompts two important questions: how was the Altar Stone transported from the very north of Scotland, a distance of more than 700 kilometres, to Stonehenge, and, more intriguing, why?”

The distance is the longest recorded journey for any stone used in a monument at that period and Prof Peace says that the next mystery to solve is how it got there.

“There are obvious physical barriers to transporting by land, and an equally daunting journey if going by sea.

“These findings will have huge ramifications for understanding communities in Neolithic times, their levels of connectivity and their transport systems”.

The new research will be pored over by archaeologists working for English Heritage, which looks after Stonehenge, according to one of the monument’s senior curators, Heather Sebire.

”This discovery certainly implies that there were great social connections in Britain at the time,” she told BBC News.

“It is phenomenal that the people of the time brought such a large stone all this way. They must have had a compelling reason to do it.

“They had a sophisticated and developed society and so they probably had a spiritual side, just like we do“.

From its opening line, Donald Trump’s first television advertisement blasting rival Kamala Harris took aim at what his campaign believes is her biggest weakness – immigration.

“This is America’s border tsar,” a narrator said, over images of the vice-president dancing, “and she’s failed us.”

A series of statistics followed, illustrating what the Trump campaign says took place under Ms Harris, who was given a role in dealing with the border crisis by President Joe Biden soon after his inauguration.

The figures in the video ranged from 10 million illegal border crossings to 250,000 fentanyl-related overdose deaths.

The voice concluded: “Kamala Harris: failed, weak, dangerously liberal.”

The Harris campaign responded that the former president was running on “his trademark lies”.

It comes as little surprise that the Trump campaign took its first big swing at Ms Harris as the “failed border tsar”, blaming her for the high numbers of undocumented immigrants at the US southern border.

Americans have consistently said in polls this year that immigration is a top problem facing their country, and it will weigh on many of their minds when they cast ballots for the next US president in November.

Since that first ad, Trump and his running mate JD Vance have repeatedly labelled Ms Harris the “failed border tsar”, and tied her to relentless images of people wading across the Rio Grande or squeezing under razor wire into the US.

Her critics say she should have found a way to address the issue over the past four years.

But “border tsar” is a contested term. Allies and former officials who worked with the vice-president say she was not given responsibility for policing the border.

“It was never that position,” said Ricardo Zuniga, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of Western Hemisphere Affairs.

“She knew from the beginning, as did the entire US government, that it was about tackling migration at its source.”

In early 2021, President Biden gave Ms Harris the unenviable brief of dealing with the “root causes” of Central American immigration.

At the time, people were fleeing a perfect storm of gang-related violence, economic ruin and environmental disasters in a region called the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Talking to migrants passing through Mexico, it was clear that most came from Honduras where, they said, a brutal “narco-dictatorship” was in power and wages were as low as five dollars a day.

While the ultimate aim of the Harris role was to reduce the numbers of people arriving at the US border, Mr Biden never used the words “border tsar” in announcing her appointment.

“She is the most qualified person to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle in stemming the movement of so many folks to our southern border,” Mr Biden said at the time.

Still, many people came to see the assignment as all-encompassing. Several media organisations, including the BBC, described Ms Harris as a “tsar” in news reports.

Some commentators in Central America and Mexico questioned her qualifications, given Ms Harris had no prior experience in Latin American affairs.

Tsar or otherwise, the job was a daunting, thankless task.

Successfully dealing with decades of underinvestment and the region’s deep-seated economic and political strife would require huge amounts of money, along with goodwill and cross-party cooperation. That’s in woefully short supply in Washington, especially when it comes to immigration.

“The idea that any one US administration is going to alter 500 years of history in Central America in a four-year period is ludicrous,” says Ricardo Zúniga.

As the former lead US diplomat on the Northern Triangle, he maintains the Biden administration did make in-roads to Central America’s problems.

He points to Ms Harris’s help raising $5bn (£3.9bn) from the private sector for job creation and entrepreneurship in the region. Several former members of her team recount how she personally called CEOs, persuading them to put in funds.

During her visit to Guatemala and Mexico in June 2021, I saw Ms Harris try to show a kinder face, following four years of Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric. She said she appreciated that people were fleeing “hunger, hurricanes and pandemic” and went on to set up a Central American corruption task force.

That trip, though, is most remembered for her stark message to all prospective migrants: “Do not come. If you come to our border, you will be turned back.”

Millions ignored her warning. Roughly two years later, in December 2023, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers had 300,000 encounters with undocumented immigrants at the US southern border.

Many who have governed along the border in recent years take a dim view of Kamala Harris and her work in Central America.

“Whatever she was doing diplomatically in other countries, I wouldn’t call it very effective based on what we saw here at the actual border,” says Douglas Nicholls, the Republican Mayor of Yuma, Arizona.

“We had record numbers of people, numbers that far exceeded anything we’d ever seen before, including over three times the population of my city in one year. Those were scary numbers.”

The vice-president is a “legitimate” target on the issue, which he says is not “a made-up excuse to whip up support among the base.”

“It should have been addressed a lot earlier than it was,” says Mayor Nicholls.

Others suggest the funds Ms Harris helped raise had only a small impact on the major incentive driving people north – being paid in US dollars.

Ricardo Barrientos, the director of the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies, said US private-sector investment paled in comparison to the remittances Central American migrants send home: $37 bn last year alone.

“It’s very small compared to the magnitude of the challenge. Some would say, ‘too little, too late’,” he said.

But Katie Tobin, who worked on immigration at the White House, says Ms Harris’s work has been deliberately “misconstrued and painted in a bad light“.

Ms Harris deserves credit for “a good news story” in Central America, she says. She points to statistics showing a 72% drop in immigration from just Central America between March 2021, when Ms Harris took on the role, and June 2024.

Ultimately, the view of Ms Harris’s record may simply split along party lines.

In recent months, the overall number of undocumented migrants has plummeted.

This is partly due to an executive order issued by President Biden allowing migrants in the US illegally to be deported without processing their asylum requests. There are also more legal pathways into the United States for prospective migrants.

Ms Harris’s defence is primarily to point to Trump’s resistance to getting a bipartisan deal on immigration reform through Congress.

In February, lawmakers reached the deal after intense wrangling, where Democrats ceded much ground to Republican positions. Republican leaders then blocked it at Trump’s behest, reportedly because he did not want to give the Biden administration a win.

“It was Trump himself who, for very openly political reasons, undermined an agreement that would help stabilise the border,” says Mr Zúniga. “So, the Trump campaign is kind of in the way of their own argument on this.”

Mayor Nicholls in Yuma is not moved by that defence, saying: “I think that’s a very short-term memory.”

He recalls contacting the Trump White House at a moment of crisis. He was invited to discuss immigration directly with the president and the Homeland Security secretary in a meeting where he was given more resources.

Three months later, he says “we were out of that crisis”.

“That is effective leadership on the border,” he adds.

Still, Ms Tobin says the Harris campaign should talk about it more.

“When there’s a vacuum and the vice-president doesn’t talk about immigration, it creates an opportunity for Republicans to fill the airwaves with disinformation.”

The Harris campaign responded to Trump’s first advertisement with some of its own.

The first focussed on Trump’s opposition to the immigration deal, and accused him of trying to stop her from fixing the “broken” immigration system.

A more recent one has put the spotlight on her work before the Biden administration, insisting that as California’s attorney general, Ms Harris prosecuted cartels and drug-trafficking gangs – and as president would crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.

It remains to be seen if this new stance will be enough for her to cast off the “failed border tsar” label, given that Republicans will no doubt continue to hammer home that image all the way to election day.

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Like his father and grandfather before him, Phool dev Shahni once made a living by diving to the bottom of 8ft-deep (2.4m), muddy ponds.

“I used to dive in 7 to 8ft of water for hours a day – coming to the surface to breathe after 8 to ten minutes,” explains Mr Shahni.

While down in those murky depths he was harvesting the seeds of a type of water lily called euryale ferox.

Known as makhanas, fox nuts or lotus seeds, they are prized for their nutritional value, being high in B vitamins, protein and fibre, with some touting them as a superfood.

Often eaten as a snack, makhanas are also used in various dishes, including the milk pudding kheer, as well as being ground into flour.

In the north-eastern Indian state of Bihar, where Mr Shahni lives, 90% of the world’s makhana is grown.

The leaves of the lily plant are large and circular and sit on the top of the pond. But the seeds form in pods under water and collecting them was an exhausting process.

“While we are at the bottom diving, mud enters our ears, eyes, nose and mouth. Lots of us have skin issues due to this. Also the plant is covered in thorns, which give us cuts all over our body during harvesting of the seeds,” Mr Shahni says.

But in recent years farmers have changed the cultivation process. The plants are now often grown in fields, in much shallower water.

Harvesting seeds in just a foot of water means Mr Shahni can make twice as much money in a day.

“It’s still hard work but I am proud of my tradition. I have three children and I will make sure that one of my sons continues the legacy of working in a fox nut field.”

Dr Manoj Kumar, is one of those behind the change in makhana cultivation.

About ten years ago he realised it would be difficult to expand its cultivation in deep ponds.

Now Senior Scientist at the National Research Centre for Makhana (NRCM), he helped to develop the cultivation of lilies in fields of shallow water.

Over the last four or five years that technique has been taking off.

“With our innovations, growing fox nuts is now as easy as any crop grown on land. The only amount of water needed is a foot. The workers don’t have to work for hours in deep water,” he explains.

And after experiments with different seeds, his centre found a more resilient and productive variety, which he says has tripled the income of farmers.

Dr Kumar says that makhana cultivation has helped some farmers cope with more uncertain weather conditions and floods that have hit Bihar in recent years.

Now NRCM is working on machines that can harvest the seeds.

All that innovation has attracted more and more farmers.

In 2022, the area used for fox nut farming was 35,224 hectares (87,000 acres), an almost threefold increase over 10 years.

Dhirendra Kumar is one farmer who has made a recent switch to makhana cultivation.

Although he grew up on a farm, he didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“As farmers we always grew wheat, lentils and mustard but ended up losing a lot of money.

“Most of the time floods destroyed the crops,” he says.

While studying for a PhD, he came into contact with a scientist working on makhana cultivation and decided to experiment with the crop on his family farm.

“The results were amazing. In the first year I made a profit of £340 [US$432],” he says.

Now he grows lilies on 17 acres (6.9 hectares) of land.

“In my wildest dreams I did not think that I would get into growing fox nuts, as it was a labour-intensive job, which was mostly carried out by fishermen.”

The change in crop has also opened up job opportunities for women. Mr Kumar now employs about 200 local women who sow the seeds.

“My aim is to provide jobs to as many farmers as possible so they don’t leave farming because of uncertainty in agriculture,” he says.

It’s not just in the field that innovations have been made.

As well as being one of the leading cultivators of makhana, Madhubani Makhana, processes it for export all over the world.

Traditionally, once the makhanas have been harvested, they are washed, roasted and then hit with a mallet-like tool to make them pop.

“The method is crude, unhygienic and risky. It is laborious, time-consuming and a number of times leads to injuries and burns,” says Shambhu Prasad, the founder and chief executive of Madhubani Makhana.

In partnership with the NRCM, his company has developed a machine which roasts and pops the fox seeds.

“This has helped us increase the quality and the production of fox nuts,” says Mr Prasad.

Three of the machines have been incorporated into his manufacturing plant in Madhubani, in the north of Bihar.

While innovation in the farming and processing of makhana is increasing production, Mr Prasad does not think that will be enough to see prices fall.

“Given the rising global demand for makhana, significant increases in production will be necessary to achieve any substantial reduction in prices,” he says.

Back on his farm, Dhirendra Kumar thinks that makhana cultivation will bring far-reaching change.

“It’s the beginning of innovation in Bihar when it comes to fox nut harvesting. It will change the landscape of the state,” he says.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) has cancelled an acclaimed pianist’s upcoming recital after comments he made on the Israel-Gaza war.

Jayson Gillham premiered Witness at a show at the MSO on Sunday. The piece was penned by another composer as a tribute to the Palestinian press.

The British-Australian was scheduled to perform again on Thursday, but the MSO has said it is reworking the programme after Gillham introduced the piece by saying Israel had killed more than 100 journalists.

A spokesperson for Gillham told the ABC he won’t comment on the decision to drop him “out of respect to the MSO and his ongoing relationship with them”.

Gillham – who is billed on the MSO website as “as one of the finest pianists of his generation” – was born in Australia but lives in the UK.

At the concert at the Iwaki Auditorium on Sunday, he performed a range of works, from Beethoven to Chopin. He also played Witness, written by Australian composer Connor D’Netto, which the MSO says was a last-minute addition.

“Over the last 10 months, Israel has killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists,” Mr Gillham said before starting the piece.

A number were “targeted assassinations of prominent journalists” who were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing press jackets, he claimed.

“The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world,” he added.

In an email to patrons, the MSO said they were blindsided by Mr Gillham’s comments and he had put them in a “difficult situation”.

“The MSO does not condone the use of our stage as a platform for expressing personal views”, it added.

Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive on Gaza and the current war.

More than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent organisation that promotes press freedom, reports that 113 of those were journalists.

Apologising for the “offence and distress” caused, the MSO said it had removed Gillham from the program and would update customers soon.

In a statement given to local media, a spokesperson for the MSO said: “Mr Gillham’s remarks went beyond the remit of his contract.”

The decision has caused a backlash on social media. High profile barrister Greg Barns said the cancellation was “truly appalling” while arts critics and former Sydney Symphony Orchestra chairman Leo Schofield said “MSO management should hang its collective head in shame”.

The Israel-Gaza war has become a volatile political issue in Australia that all sides have sought to carefully manage.

As has been the case in countless other countries, there have been protests from both Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as a sharp uptick in Islamophobia and antisemitism.

Molly-Mae Hague has announced her split from fiancé Tommy Fury after five years together.

The influencer shared the news on her Instagram story to her 7.9m followers, adding she would be taking some time away from social media.

“I am extremely upset to announce that mine and Tommy’s relationship has come to an end,” she posted.

The pair, who met on the 2019 series of Love Island and got engaged in 2023, welcomed their daughter Bambi early last year.

In his own statement, Fury said he was “heartbroken” and asked fans for privacy. He thanked Hague for “making me a dad”, adding: “Bambi is our priority.”

Hague and Fury, both aged 25, are arguably the most high-profile couple to have emerged from ITV2’s Love Island.

In her statement, Hague said: “Never in a million years did I think I’d ever have to write this.

“After five years of being together I never imagined our story would end, especially not this way.”

She added: “I will forever be grateful for the most important thing to me now and always, my beautiful daughter,” Hague said in her statement.

“Without us there would be no her, she will always be my priority.

“I want to thank you all for the love you have shown us over the last five years.

“You have all been a part of our journey and I feel it’s right to share this with you all.”

Hague concluded the post by saying she’ll be back on social media “when it feels right”.

Shortly afterwards, Fury released his own statement on Instagram, telling followers: “I am heartbroken to share that Molly & I have decided to end our relationship.

“The past 5 years have led us to having our beautiful baby girl, Bambi, and I will forever be thankful to Molly for making me a dad. Bambi is our priority.”

He continued: “Please respect our privacy, and our families privacy, as we navigate our way through this difficult time.”

Fury is the brother of heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, and is also a boxer himself.

Hague has the biggest social media following of any former Love Island contestant, and was creative director of fashion retailer PrettyLittleThing until last year.

Fury and Hague met in the 2019 series of Love Island. Fury was one of the original contestants that year, with Hague entering the Spanish villa on day four.

After coupling up, the pair made it to the final, but finished in second place to Amber Gill and Greg O’Shea.

However, Hague and Fury stayed together after the series had concluded, and their daughter Bambi was born in January 2023.

Fury proposed to Hague in Ibiza six months later, at a clifftop ceremony surrounded by white roses.