A Russian murderer who was released from prison to fight in the war in Ukraine, only to then kill an elderly woman, has been released a second time to return to the front, according to relatives of the woman.

“Grandma’s killer has escaped punishment for his crime – again – and has gone to fight in the war,” Anna Pekareva, the granddaughter of Yulia Byuskikh, told the BBC.

In 2022, Ivan Rossomakhin was released from prison, where he was serving a 14-year prison sentence for murder, to join the Wagner mercenary group.

He was later allowed to return home to the district of Vyatskiye Polyany in Russia’s Kirov Region. There, he attacked and killed 85-year-old Yulia in her own house.

• Russian convicts released to fight with Wagner accused of crimes

The killing was one of several committed by criminals who had been released from prisons all over Russia to join the Wagner group.

In April this year, 29-year-old Rossomakhin was found guilty of Yulia’s rape and murder and sentenced to 22 years in a high-security prison, later increased to 23 years. The court noted that the killing “involved extreme brutality”.

But Anna says the prison governor has now notified the family that Rossomakhin was released on 19 August – just one week after the start of his sentence.

“My first reaction was terror. I read the forensic reports and I know what this person did to my grandmother. It’s monstrous that he has been released again,” says Anna, adding: “The fact that this is happening in the 21st Century… there are no words that can describe what’s happening!”

An official document seen by the BBC, signed by the prison governor, states that the inmate was released in connection with a specific Russian law that allows the military to recruit convicts to send to the frontline.

It’s the second time the convicted murderer has been let out of jail in order to fight in Ukraine.

Shortly after the start of the full-scale invasion, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group began recruiting convicts from prisons to fight in Ukraine. If inmates agreed to sign up, they would receive an official pardon from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Thousands of rapists, murderers and other criminals, including Ivan Rossomakhin, were released from incarceration and sent to the frontlines, where many were killed during brutal assaults on Ukrainian cities such as Bakhmut.

After Prigozhin’s failed mutiny last year, when thousands of Wagner mercenaries marched on Moscow, enlisting inmates from prisons was taken over by the Russian military. The practice was formalised in an official federal law in March this year, and recruitment now appears to be intensifying.

Under the law, convicted criminals who sign up to fight have their remaining sentences suspended for the duration of their military service. Some could even receive an official pardon if they win awards, for example for “bravery” on the battlefield.

The Russian Embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment on the practice of releasing dangerous criminals to fight in Ukraine.

Ukraine has also released some prisoners to fight at the front, though people convicted of murder or sexual offences are not eligible. Ukrainian Deputy Justice Minister Olena Vysotska told the AP news agency earlier this year that up to 3,000 prisoners have joined the military.

A grinding offensive by Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region this year has depleted Moscow’s reserves. The UK Ministry of Defence has estimated that during two months of the operation, Russia lost as many as 70,000 men – that’s an average casualty rate of around 1,000 per day.

Regular recruitment drives are being stepped up, too. In the last year, one-off payments for volunteering to fight have risen steeply. In some cases, men are offered as much as 1.5 million roubles (£12,360) to sign up.

The Kremlin’s willingness to release highly dangerous criminals like Rossomakhin and send them to war indicates that the Russian military desperately needs more recruits.

“It’s obvious there isn’t enough manpower,” Anna says.

“The authorities don’t give a damn about peaceful civilians if they allow people who have committed serious crimes to be exonerated and let out of prison. It tells us that no-one can feel safe in Russia.”

Anna says Rossomakhin’s release means her family are now in extreme danger: “If he comes back he’ll try and take revenge on us – for our efforts to ensure he got a life sentence.

She says she wants to leave the country, and other family members will go into hiding.

“It’s frightening that he’s not the only one. Even if he doesn’t return, how many more murderers and psychopaths are out there walking around?”

In the Palestinian village of Battir, where ancient terraces are irrigated by a natural spring, life carries on as it has for centuries.

Part of a Unesco World Heritage site, Battir is known for its olive groves and vineyards. But now it is the latest flashpoint over settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has approved a new Jewish settlement here, taking away privately owned land for new settler houses and new outposts have been set up without even Israeli authorisation.

“They are stealing our land to build their dreams on our catastrophe,” says Ghassan Olyan, whose property is among that seized.

Unesco says it is concerned by the settlers’ plans around Battir, but the village is far from an isolated example. All settlements are seen as illegal under international law, although Israel disagrees.

“They are not caring about the international law, or local law, and even God’s law,” Mr Olyan says.

Last week, Israel’s domestic intelligence chief Ronen Bar wrote to ministers warning that Jewish extremists in the West Bank were carrying out acts of “terror” against Palestinians and causing “indescribable damage” to the country.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, there has been an acceleration in settlement growth in the occupied West Bank.

Extremists in Israel’s government boast that these changes will prevent an independent Palestinian state from ever being created.

There are fears, too, that they seek to prolong the war in Gaza to suit their goals.

Yonatan Mizrahi from Peace Now, an Israeli organisation that monitors settlement growth, says Jewish extremists in the West Bank are exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation, and making it harder than ever to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

He believes a “mix of rage and fear” in Israeli society after the 7 October attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed is driving settlers to seize more land, with fewer people questioning them.

A June survey by the Pew Research Center suggested that 40% of Israelis believed settlements made the country safer, up from 27% in 2013. Meanwhile, 35% of people polled said that the settlements hurt Israel’s security, down from 42%.

Mr Mizrahi worries that Jewish extremists in the West Bank are exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation, making it harder than ever to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. “I think it’s extremely dangerous,” he says. “It’s increasing the hate on both sides.”

Since the outbreak of the war, settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank has surged.

It had already been on the rise, but in the past 10 months the UN has documented around 1,270 attacks, compared with 856 in all of 2022.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, during the same period Israeli settler harassment has forced Palestinians out of at least 18 villages in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory between Israel and Jordan that was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and has been occupied ever since.

Between 7 October and August 2024, 589 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank – at least 570 by Israeli forces and at least 11 by settlers, according to the UN. They include some said to have been planning attacks as well as unarmed civilians. In the same period, Palestinians killed five settlers and nine members of Israel’s security forces.

This week, a Palestinian man aged 40 was reportedly shot dead after settlers and Israeli soldiers entered Wadi al-Rahhel, near Bethlehem. The Israeli military said stones had previously been thrown at an Israeli vehicle nearby.

Last month, a 22-year-old Palestinian man was killed when dozens of settlers rampaged through the village of Jit, prompting international condemnation. Israeli security forces have made four arrests and have described the incident as a “severe terror event”.

But the track record in such cases is one of virtual impunity. Israeli civil rights group Yesh Din found that, between 2005 and 2023, just 3% of official investigations into settler violence ended in a conviction.

In the letter by Ronen Bar, which was leaked to Israeli media, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service said that radical settlers were emboldened by light-handed law enforcement.

Settlers live in exclusively Jewish communities set up in parts of the West Bank.

Many settlements have the legal support of the Israeli government; others, known as outposts, and often as simple as caravans and corrugated iron sheds, are illegal even under Israeli law. But extremists build them regardless in a bid to seize more land.

In July, when the UN’s top court found for the first time that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was illegal, it said the country should halt all settlement activity and withdraw as soon as possible.

Israel’s Western allies have repeatedly described settlements as an obstacle to peace. Israel rejected the finding, saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”

Now there are fears that extremists are working to make settlements in the West Bank irreversible.

They have rapidly expanded their control over the territory, with the support of the most far-right government in Israel’s history. These extremists are advancing annexation plans in the West Bank and also openly call for settling Gaza once the war is over. Settlers now serve at the heart of Israel’s government, in key ministries.

At the very time that world leaders opposed to settlements are voicing renewed enthusiasm for a two-state solution – a long-hoped for peace plan that would create a separate Palestinian state – Israeli religious nationalists, who believe all these lands rightfully belong to Israel, are vowing to make the dream of an independent Palestinian state impossible.

Analysts think this is why some politicians are refusing to accept any ceasefire deal.

“The reason they don’t want to end the conflict or go into a hostage deal is because they believe that Israel should keep on fighting until it can reach a point where it can stay inside Gaza,” says Tal Schneider, political correspondent for The Times of Israel.

“They think for the long term their ideology is more righteous,” she adds. “This is their own logic.”

Israeli authorities, meanwhile, have announced plans for five new settlements, including the one in Battir, and declared a record area of land, at least 23 sq km, for the state. This means Israel considers it Israeli land, regardless of whether it is in the occupied Palestinian territories, or privately owned by Palestinians, or both, and Palestinians are prevented from using it.

By changing facts on the ground, as the settlers describe it, they hope to move enough Israelis on to the land and build enough on it to make their presence irreversible. Their long-term hope is that Israel formally annexes the land.

Outside state-sanctioned land seizures, extremists have also rapidly established settlement outposts.

In one by al-Qanoub, north of Hebron, satellite images showed new caravans and roads had appeared in the months since the start of the war. Meanwhile, an entire Palestinian community has been forced off the land.

We drove to al-Qanoub with Ibrahim Shalalda, 50, and his 80-year-old uncle Mohammed, who told us their homes had been destroyed by settlers last November.

As we approached, an extremist settler blocked the road with his car.

Armed Israelis soon arrived. The group – some Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, with insignia on their uniforms and one identified as a settlement security officer – stopped us for checks.

The settlement guard forced the two Palestinian farmers from the car and searched them. After two hours, the IDF soldiers dispersed the settlers and allowed the BBC car to leave.

Israel began settling the West Bank soon after capturing it from Jordan and occupying it more than five decades ago. Successive governments since then have allowed creeping settlement expansion.

Today, an estimated three million Palestinians live on the land – excluding Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem – alongside about half a million Jewish Israelis in more than 130 settlements.

But a prominent far-right government figure who took office in 2022 is promising to double the number of settlers to a million.

Bezalel Smotrich believes that Jews have a God-given right to these lands. He heads one of two far-right, pro-settler parties that veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought into his governing coalition after the 2022 elections returned him to power.

Mr Smotrich serves as finance minister but also has a post in the defence ministry, which has allowed him to make sweeping changes to Israeli policies in the West Bank.

He has massively invested state finances in settlements, including new roads and infrastructure. But he has also created a new bureaucracy, taking powers from the military, to fast-track settler construction.

In secretly recorded remarks to supporters, Mr Smotrich boasted that he was working towards “changing the DNA” of the system and for de facto annexation that would be “easier to swallow in the international and legal context”.

Religious nationalists have sat on the fringes of Israeli politics for decades.

But their ideology has slowly become more popular. In the 2022 election, these parties took 13 seats in the 120-seat Israeli parliament and became kingmakers in Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.

During the war, Bezalel Smotrich and fellow radical Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s national security minister, have repeatedly made comments stoking social division and provoking Israel’s Western allies.

After Israel’s military arrested reservists accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee, Mr Ben Gvir said it was “shameful” for Israel to arrest “our best heroes”. This month, Mr Smotrich suggested it might be “justified and moral” to starve Gazans.

But it is in the West Bank and Gaza that the far right seeks to make permanent changes. “This is a group of Israelis who have been against any type of compromise with the Palestinians or Israel’s other Arab neighbours,” says Anshel Pfeffer, a veteran Israeli journalist and correspondent for The Economist.

And with the war in Gaza, the far right sees a fresh opportunity. Mr Smotrich has called for Palestinian residents to leave, making way for Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.

Although Mr Netanyahu has ruled out restoring Jewish settlements in Gaza, he remains beholden to far-right parties who threaten to collapse his coalition if he signs a “reckless” ceasefire deal to bring home Israeli hostages currently held by Hamas.

The logic of the extremists may be one that only a minority of Israelis follow. But it is helping to prolong the war, and dramatically transforming the landscape of the West Bank – causing long-term damage to chances of peace.

Canada says it will impose a 100% tariff on imports of China-made electric vehicles (EV) after similar announcements by the US and European Union.

The country also plans to impose a 25% duty on Chinese steel and aluminium.

Canada and its Western allies accuse China of subsidising its EV industry, giving its car makers an unfair advantage.

China has called the move “trade protectionism” which “violates World Trade Organization rules”.

“We are transforming Canada’s automotive sector to be a global leader in building the vehicles of tomorrow, but actors like China have chosen to give themselves an unfair advantage in the global marketplace”, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canada’s duties on Chinese EVs are due to come into effect on 1 October, while those on steel and aluminium will be implemented from 15 October.

A Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson said Canada’s actions “seriously undermine the global economic system, and economic and trade rules”.

“China urges the Canadian side to immediately correct its erroneous practices,” they added.

China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, behind the US.

In May, the US said it would quadruple its tariffs on imports of Chinese EVs to 100%.

That was followed by the EU, which announced plans to impose duties on China-made EVs of up to 36.3%.

Canada’s tariffs on Chinese EVs will include those made by Tesla at its Shanghai factory.

“Tesla will almost certainly be lobbying the Canadian government to get some leeway on these tariffs, as they have already with Europe,” said Mark Rainford, a China-based car industry commentator.

“If they fail at mitigating the tariff enough, they’ll likely look at switching their Canadian imports to either the US or European factories since Canada is their 6th largest market this year and thus not insignificant.”

Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment from BBC News.

Earlier this month, the EU cut its planned extra tariff on China-made Teslas by more than half, after further investigations requested by Elon Musk’s car maker.

Chinese car brands are still not a common sight in Canada but some, like BYD, have taken steps to enter the country’s market.

China is the world’s largest manufacturer of EVs and its car makers have quickly gained a significant share of the global market.

Meanwhile, Canada has struck deals worth billions of dollars with major European car makers, as it tries to become a key part of the global EV industry.

Jake Sullivan has been welcomed to China on his first visit as US national security adviser. He will hold talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi as the two countries try to stabilise relations.

Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang have met four times over 16 months in Vienna, Malta, Washington and Bangkok. Their last meeting in January was shortly after a high-stakes summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden that sought to reset frosty ties.

This week’s talks – scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday – signal that China is still a priority for the Biden administration, even as the retiring president enters his final months in office.

Both Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang have already acknowledged a need to find common ground after disagreements between their nations.

Could another presidential summit be on the cards?

The White House is trying not to explicitly link Mr Sullivan’s trip to the US presidential election. But it’s hard to ignore the timing.

If Mr Sullivan is able to lay the groundwork for a final Biden-Xi summit, his trip would tie up the ends of the US president’s most consequential – and fraught – foreign policy relationship.

US and Chinese diplomats always acknowledge that talks between Washington and Beijing are never easy. And there is a lot to talk about.

With the unexpected turn the US election has taken with Biden bowing out in favour of Kamala Harris, China is watching closely for what the next presidency might have in store.

Donald Trump has made it clear he will raise tariffs further on Chinese goods, potentially deepening the trade war he kicked off in 2019.

While Mr Biden’s administration saw merit in diplomacy, he didn’t reverse Trump-era tariffs and has added more – in May he announced steep duties on Chinese-made electric cars, solar panels, and steel.

Mr Biden has also strengthened alliances across Asia to combat China’s rising influence and beefed up Washington’s military presence – which, in turn, has rattled Beijing.

So far, the Harris campaign has not given many clues about how she plans to manage the relationship with China.

And the White House has made clear that Mr Sullivan’s visit is meant to continue the work of the Biden administration, rather than set the tone for the next president.

But China is likely looking ahead anyway.

Beijing will use this opportunity with Mr Sullivan to clarify its own priorities. It will hope that all parties in America are listening – China’s ministry of foreign affairs has described this as a “critical juncture” between the world’s two biggest economies.

For China, the red line is and always will be Taiwan. It claims the self-governing island and has repeatedly said it will not tolerate any signs that Washington is encouraging Taiwanese independence.

High-profile diplomatic visits, such as a controversial one by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022, or recognition of Taiwan’s elections or its elected leaders, fall into that category.

Chinese state media has said Beijing will focus on expressing grave concerns, stating its position, and making serious demands on matters such as the “Taiwan question”.

China will also have some strong words for Mr Sullivan on trade. Beijing has described US tariffs on Chinese goods as “unreasonable” and has urged Washington to “stop politicising and securitising economic and trade issues” and “take more measures to facilitate people-to-people exchanges between the two countries”.

When he came to power, Mr Biden wanted to set ties with China on an even keel after what he saw as the chaos and unpredictability of the Trump White House.

His administration has wanted to “responsibly manage” rivalry with Beijing; to demonstrate American power and competition with China through stealth not bravado.

But that strategy has been upended amid the turbulence of events.

Last year, crisis engulfed the direct relationship when an American fighter jet shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over US territory.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have further sharpened the tone.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing in April with a warning – Washington would act if China did not stop supplying Russia with microchips and machine parts to build weapons used in its war in Ukraine.

He accused his Chinese counterparts of “helping to fuel the biggest threat” to European security since the Cold War.

His warning materialised with a raft of sanctions on Chinese firms over their alleged support of the Russian military.

This is a tricky subject that China keeps trying to bat away, but Washington is insistent, and Mr Sullivan is likely to bring it up again.

China’s increasing assertiveness in Asia has also made the US wary of the impact of those ties further afield – particularly with Iran, which allies itself with Moscow and also arms Israel’s adversaries.

Finally, in America, there is the devastating domestic impact of Chinese-manufactured “pre-cursor” chemicals to make synthetic opioids like fentanyl, overdoses of which are killing more Americans than ever and the crisis has laid waste to entire towns.

Last year’s summit between Mr Biden and Mr Xi in San Fransisco was meant to make progress on these issues.

Since then, despite the tariffs and the stern rhetoric, Washington and Beijing have acknowledged their differences – and reports of the two sides striking a deal on curbing fentanyl production are a good sign.

In April, when the BBC accompanied US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his visit to Shanghai and Beijing, the public elements of some of his meetings with senior Chinese officials felt like a steely stand-off.

It was a show of diplomatic strength meant for each side’s domestic audience. And this will undoubtedly be a part of Mr Sullivan’s trip too, as he tries to bolster Mr Biden’s diplomacy in the waning months of his presidency.

But these meetings serve another fundamental purpose – face-to-face time between two rival, inter-dependent economies as they battle mutual distrust and try to probe each other’s real intentions.

It seems that Jake Sullivan’s previous meetings with Wang Yi have quietly laid the groundwork for what both sides call “stable relations”.

In a recent speech at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, Mr Sullivan said that he and Mr Wang had “increasingly gotten to the point of setting aside the talking points and really having strategic conversations”.

He described the character of those conversations as “direct”, including one on the war in Ukraine.

“Both of us left feeling that we didn’t agree or see eye-to-eye on everything but that there was a lot of work to carry forward.”

Police in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata have fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of protesters demanding justice for the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at a state-run hospital earlier this month.

The discovery of the body of the 31-year-old sparked nationwide outrage over the crisis of violence against women.

On Tuesday, thousands marched to a government building in Kolkata, demanding the resignation of West Bengal’s Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee.

A hospital volunteer has been arrested in connection with the crime, which has now been handed over to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) after criticism of the local police’s slow progress.

The protesters chanted slogans and clashed with police, who used batons to disperse the crowd.

Namita Ghosh, a college student at the protest, told news agency AFP the crowd intended to “protest peacefully” before the baton charge.

A senior police official, speaking anonymously, said at least 100 protesters were arrested for “creating violence”.

• Rape and murder of doctor in hospital sparks protests in India
• Indian women lead night protests after doctor’s rape and murder

A series of protests have taken place since the killing on 9 August. The largest saw tens of thousands of women across West Bengal participating in the Reclaim the Night march on 14 August to demand “independence to live in freedom and without fear”.

But since then, some of the protests have escalated into chaotic political rallies, with police clashing with ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demonstrators angry at the state government.

The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi but an opposition party in West Bengal, has accused Ms Banerjee’s government of fostering an unsafe environment for women, which they claim enabled crimes like the doctor’s murder.

Her half-naked body bearing extensive injuries was discovered in a seminar hall at RG Kar Medical College, where she had reportedly gone to rest during her shift.

India’s Supreme Court has said the incident had “shocked the conscience of the nation” and criticised authorities for their handling of the investigation.

Ms Banerjee’s government has announced a slew of measures for women’s safety at workplaces, including designated retiring rooms and CCTV-monitored “safe zones” at state-run hospitals.

More incidents of rape have made headlines in India since the woman’s death and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that “monstrous behaviour against women should be severely and quickly punished”.

The Israeli military says commandos have rescued from an underground tunnel in Gaza a Bedouin Arab hostage who was kidnapped by Hamas during the 7 October attack on Israel.

Kaid Farhan Elkadi, 52, was rescued in a “complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet domestic security service, according to a statement.

No further details could be published “due to considerations of the safety of our hostages, the security of our forces, and national security”, it said.

Mr Elkadi – the eighth hostage rescued by Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza – is in a stable condition in hospital, where he is undergoing examinations.

Photographs released by the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba showed him speaking to members of his family while sitting in a hospital armchair.

His brother, Hatam, told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that he was “a little thin”.

“We told him that everything is fine and that everyone is waiting for him outside,” he said.

“We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. We hope that all hostages will get this moment, that they will all experience the same excitement and joy,” he added. “May all the hostages return, and may all the families feel this feeling.”

Mr Elkadi, a father of 11 and grandfather of one, is from a Bedouin village in the Rahat area of the Negev desert.

He worked for many years as a security guard at Kibbutz Magen, close to the Israel-Gaza border, where he was abducted 10 months ago.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a video announcement that he could not go into many details about the operation in which he was freed.

But he added that he could “share that Israeli commandos rescued [him] from an underground tunnel, following accurate intelligence”.

Footage released by the IDF showed Mr Elkadi sitting down, smiling and speaking to soldiers, including the commander of the 162nd Division, moments after his rescue.

Haaretz reported that he managed to escape his captors before being rescued, and that the soldiers attempted to understand whether he had been held with other hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had congratulated Mr Elkadi in a telephone call and told him that all Israelis were moved by the news.

“We are working relentlessly to return all of our hostages,” the statement quoted Mr Netanyahu as saying.

“We are doing this in two main ways: negotiations and rescue operations. The two of these together require our military presence on the ground, and constant military pressure.”

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum described the rescue as “miraculous”.

But it stressed that “military operations alone cannot free the remaining hostages who have suffered 326 days of abuse and terror”, and that “a negotiated deal is the only way forward”.

“We urgently call on the international community to maintain pressure on Hamas to accept the proposed deal and release all hostages.”

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

More than 40,430 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 104 hostages still being held, including 34 who are presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Indirect talks have continued in Cairo in recent days, but so far there has been no sign of a breakthrough over key sticking points. They include Mr Netanyahu’s demand that Israel keep troops along Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Hamas has rejected.

Two other Bedouin Arabs – Yousef Zyadna and his son, Hamza – are among the remaining hostages who are still alive, while the body of a third, Mhamad el-Atrash, is still being held by Hamas.

Another Bedouin, Hisham al-Sayed, has been held captive in Gaza since 2015.

Japan has accused a Chinese spy plane of breaching its airspace, in what would be the first known instance of such a direct violation.

Japan scrambled fighter jets after a Y-9 surveillance plane “violated the territorial airspace” of Danjo Islands for about two minutes at 11:29 local time Monday (02:29 GMT).

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary called the breach “utterly unacceptable” and summoned a Chinese embassy official in Tokyo in protest.

The incident comes as tensions rise in the region, where China competes for influence against the US and its allies, including Japan.

Japanese authorities issued “notifications and warnings” to the Chinese aircraft during Monday’s incursion, but no weapons such as flare guns were used, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Nonetheless, the incident has stoked concern.

The Japanese government said it had contacted Beijing through diplomatic channels to lodge a strong protest over the incursion and demand the prevention of such breaches in the future.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said they had “no intention of invading the airspace of any country” and that relevant departments were still trying to understand the situation, reported Reuters.

Tokyo also recently flagged the presence of Chinese ships in the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are claimed by China and which Beijing calls the Diaoyus.

The islands, which are uninhabited but potentially possess oil and gas reserves, are one of several sources of tension between Beijing and its neighbours – most of whom are American allies.

Another is Japan’s Okinawa island, which is home to the largest US military installation in the Asia-Pacific region. There are also American troops stationed in Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea.

“This latest incursion may seem alarming as China tends not to venture directly into Japanese airspace,” Professor Ian Chong, a Chinese foreign policy expert at the National University of Singapore, told the BBC.

“Although it is consistent with China’s behaviour as regards Taiwan and the Philippines in recent years.”

In a single day last month, Taiwan’s defence ministry reported 66 incursions by Chinese military aircraft across the so-called ‘median line’ – an informal border between the two sides in the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing does not recognise the median line and, according to Taiwan, its planes have breached it hundreds of times in the past two years.

The Philippines, meanwhile, recently called China the “greatest disrupter of peace” in South East Asia.

Those comments followed a clash in a disputed part of the South China Sea on Sunday, over what Manila said was a resupply mission for fishermen.

“We have to expect these kinds of behaviour from China because this is a struggle,” said Philippines Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro.

“We have to be ready to anticipate and to get used to these kinds of acts of China which are patently illegal, as we have repeatedly said,” he told reporters on Monday.

The US national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, is in Beijing this week for talks with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi.

The two sides will discuss their differences over several flashpoints in the region and across the world.

“Washington probably will be looking at ways to avoid uncontrolled escalation, although this proposition can be difficult to put into practice,” said Professor Chong.

At least five people, including two children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on an urban refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry says.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed the strike, on Nur Shams camp near the city of Tulkarm, saying it had targeted what it called the command room of a “terror cell”.

Separately, the health ministry said one person had been shot dead and three injured during an attack by Israeli settlers near Bethlehem. The IDF said it was investigating the reports.

There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

The UN said last Wednesday that 128 Palestinians, including 26 children, had been killed in Israeli air strikes in the West Bank since 7 October.

Overall, 607 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, including 11 by Israeli settlers, over the same period, it added.

Fifteen Israelis, including nine members of Israeli forces and five settlers, were also killed in attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the UN. Another 10 Israelis were killed in attacks in Israel by Palestinians from the West Bank.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that an Israeli drone carried out the strike on a house in Nur Shams camp on Monday night and four loud explosions were heard.

The Palestinian health ministry identified the five people killed as Mohannad Qarawi, 19, Jibril Jibril, 20, Adnan Jaber, 15, Mohammed Yusif, 49, and Mohammed Elayyan, 16.

Jibril Jibril was a member of Hamas who had been released from an Israeli prison in November as part of an exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, according to the Palestinian reports.

Nur Shams has been targeted by the IDF several times in recent months. In April, the Palestinian Red Crescent said 14 people had been killed in a two-day Israeli operation there.

Later on Monday, the health ministry said a 40-year-old man named Khalil Salem Khalawi was shot dead during an attack by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian village of Wadi Rahhal, south of Bethlehem. Three other people were wounded, it added.

Wafa cited the head of the village council, Hamdi Ziada, as saying that shots were fired as settlers attacked homes near the local boys’ school.

He also claimed that Israeli forces had entered the village to provide protection for the settlers and fired tear-gas at residents.

Israel’s Ynet news website reported that Mr Khalawi was an Israeli Arab and that he was shot dead by IDF soldiers who arrived in Wadi Rahhal following a claim by settlers that stones had been thrown at an Israeli vehicle. Settlers also clashed with residents of the village, it said.

The IDF said it was looking into reports, which come two weeks after a Palestinian man was shot dead during a settler attack on the village of Jit.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land the Palestinians want as part of a future state – in the 1967 Middle East war.

The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets bowing to what he calls pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” content on Facebook and Instagram during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a letter sent to a US House committee chair, he said some material – including humour and satire – was taken down in 2021 under pressure from senior officials.

The White House has defended its actions, saying it encouraged “responsible actions to protect public health and safety”.

Mr Zuckerberg also said his firm briefly “demoted” content relating to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, ahead of the 2020 election, after the FBI warned of “a potential Russian disinformation” operation.

It later became clear that this content was not part of such an operation, Mr Zuckerberg said, and it should not have been temporarily taken down.

Mr Zuckerberg did not give further detail about the actions he regretted during the pandemic. At that time, his business removed posts for a variety of reasons.

Mr Zuckerberg said the decisions made were the decisions of his business, but that the “government pressure was wrong”.

He continued: “We made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Mr Zuckerberg said he and Meta would be ready to “push back” if something similar happened in the future.

His letter was addressed to Jim Jordan, the chair of the House judiciary committee, which has been investigating content moderation on online platforms. Republicans said the letter was a “big win for free speech“.

In a statement issued to the website Politico, the White House stood by its actions.

It said: “Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.”

Mr Zuckerberg’s comments on Hunter Biden refer to the story of a laptop that was abandoned by the president’s son at a repair shop in Delaware – as first reported by the New York Post.

The newspaper claimed emails found on the computer suggested his business abroad had influenced US foreign policy while his father was vice-president.

The president and his family have denied any wrongdoing.

The story became a notable right-wing talking point in the US, and a point of contention as some social media platforms censored the content.

Mr Zuckerberg said the story was temporarily demoted on his platforms while going through a fact-check – after a warning from the FBI of a potential Russian disinformation operation, and “in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote.

“We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Mr Zuckerberg also said he did not plan to make any more contributions to supporting electoral infrastructure.

In 2020, he donated $400m (£302m) via his philanthropic Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which was intended to help government offices conduct the election during the pandemic.

However, misinformation spread rapidly on social media accusing Mr Zuckerberg of effectively using a loophole to skirt maximum donation limits in a bid to get Mr Biden elected.

Mr Zuckerberg said his donations “were designed to be non-partisan”.

“Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other.

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role on way or another – or to even appear to be playing a role – so I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”

Some of France’s left-wing leaders have backed protests against President Emmanuel Macron, after he refused to nominate a government led by the left-wing New Popular Front alliance (NFP).

The four-party coalition won the most seats in last month’s parliamentary elections and said its candidate, Paris civil servant Lucie Castets, should be named prime minister, even though they fell far short of a majority.

President Macron said France needed institutional stability and the left could not win a confidence vote that would come immediately from its opponents in parliament.

The biggest of the four left-wing parties, France Unbowed, called for a big demonstration on 7 September.

The Communist leader also backed a “big popular mobilisation” in the coming days, although the Socialists indicated that for now there was an urgent need for political discussion.

Mr Macron, whose centrist Ensemble alliance came second in the election, began new consultations with party leaders on Tuesday.

President Macron said France needed institutional stability and the left could not win a confidence vote that would come immediately from its opponents in parliament.

Mr Macron, whose centrist Ensemble alliance came second in the election, began new consultations with party leaders on Tuesday.

He appealed to three of the four left-wing parties – the Socialists, Greens and Communists – to work with “other political forces” to find a way out of the impasse, without mentioning the radical left France Unbowed, which won the most seats of the four.

However, the three parties refused to take up his offer. Socialist leader Olivier Faure said he would not be an “accomplice in a parody of democracy”. Marine Tondelier of the Greens said her party would not “continue this circus, this sham consultation”.

No one group was able to win a majority in the elections, with the NFP gaining more than 190 seats, Mr Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance about 160 and the far-right National Rally (RN) 140.

Mr Macron’s term in office continues until 2027, and the French government tends to be formed from the president’s party as parliamentary elections usually follow soon after the presidential vote. But that changed when he called snap parliamentary elections this summer.

A caretaker government has led France since the 7 July vote, including during the Paris Olympics, to the anger of the NFP alliance.

“My responsibility is that the country is not blocked nor weakened,” Mr Macron said after a first round of talks on Monday evening.

“The Socialist Party, the Greens and the Communists have not yet proposed ways to co-operate with other political forces. It is now up to them to do so,” he added.

France Unbowed (LFI) reacted angrily to the president’s words, with national coordinator Manuel Bompard complaining of an “unacceptable anti-democratic coup”. LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon went further, with a threat to impeach the president.

The party called on youth organisations and other groups to take part in a “big mobilisation” on 7 September, accusing the president of seriously endangering democracy.

Communist leader Fabien Roussel urged the French people to protest wherever they were, “in town centres and in front of prefectures”.

Olivier Faure of the Socialists said he too would take part in demonstrations, if they took place. “I’m not looking for chaos,” he said, “I am saying that’s what is being created by the head of state.”

Lucie Castets, 37, was an unlikely choice of candidate for prime minister. She is financial director at Paris City Hall and as a senior civil servant she is unelected.

She told French radio on Tuesday that the head of state was telling the people of France they had got the vote wrong: “Democracy means nothing to the president and I find that extremely dangerous.”

Both Ensemble and National Rally, whose leaders met the president on Monday, have vowed to vote down candidates from the NFP. RN leaders Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella described the NFP as a “danger” for France.

President Macron has sought to form a government made up of “republican forces”, which excludes both the far-right National Rally and the radical France Unbowed.

Among other potential candidates named in political circles as France’s next prime minister are former Socialist interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Xavier Bertrand, who is a regional leader from the centre-right Republicans.

The current caretaker Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, said on Tuesday that, as a as a “great republican”, Mr Cazeneuve could well work out as head of a coalition.

Rejecting France Unbowed as dangerous, he told French TV “a New Popular Front government has no chance of surviving in power for more than a day”.

Like so many in Australia, Sam grew up in a community where having a punt was synonymous with sport.

“Our friends, our family would ask ‘Oh who are you betting on this week?’ That was the normal conversation that occurred,” his sister Amy – who is not using her real name – says.

Looking back, she blames that normalisation of gambling – the way it crept into their home and baked itself into social interactions – for her brother’s addiction, and for the suffering he endured before taking his life.

“It just destroyed him physically and emotionally,” she explains. “We tried everything. We were a close family, but we obviously didn’t know how bad it was – it crushed him.”

Amy is one of dozens who came forward to testify in a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry into the impacts of gambling in Australia – which wagers more per capita than any other country.

The probe found that there were “few safeguards” to protect those battling addiction and recommended 31 reforms to avoid “grooming” a new generation of children to gamble, starting with a three-year phased ban on advertising.

Now, pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – both externally and from within his party – to act, with polling suggesting a majority of people support the move.

But the government has signalled it may instead opt for a cap to limit advertising. It has cited the role gambling ad revenue plays in propping up the nation’s ailing free-to-air broadcasters, as well as warnings from wagering companies that a ban could drive consumers offshore.

Doing so would result in huge tax losses on Australian betting platforms which currently fund “vital services”, the peak body representing the industry says.

The debate has spurred accusations that corporate interests are standing in the way of common-sense reform.

It has also spotlighted the deep-rooted links between sport, gambling, and entertainment in Australia.

Betting occupies a unique space in Australian culture.

In the 1980s, it became the first country to deregulate its gambling industry, making it possible for slot machines – once only permitted inside casinos – to expand into licensed pubs and clubs.

Today, Australia is home to roughly 0.33% of the world’s population, but a fifth of all “pokies”- the colloquial term used for the machines.

The last two decades have also seen an explosion in the popularity of online betting, particularly when it comes to sport. Estimates show Australians are spending approximately A$25bn ($16.8bn; £12.9bn) on legal wagers each year – with 38% of the population gambling weekly.

Experts argue that sophisticated marketing has aided that boom, while sponsorship deals, partnerships, and kickbacks given to prevalent sporting bodies, have helped legitimise the industry

Sean – not his real name – has been gambling legally, and often obsessively, for more than 18 years. He was introduced by a friend to sports betting as a teenager, and from there, things snowballed. “Some days I couldn’t sleep unless I knew that I had a bet on. It got to the point where I was betting on sports I’d never seen in countries I’d never heard of,” he told the BBC.

Now 36 and seeking help from sponsors, he doesn’t like to keep tabs on what feels like a lifetime of losses, but he puts the total figure in the ballpark of A$2m.

He says the relationship breakdowns and years of isolation are harder to quantify: “If I never gambled, I would be married with kids right now”.

One academic paper found that like Sean, 90% of Australian adults and roughly three-quarters of children aged eight to 16 years see betting as a “normal part of sport”. Advocates like Martin Thomas argue this is evidence that the practice “has seeped into every corner of society”.

“Our kids know just as much about the odds on a game and multi bets as they do their favourite players,” he tells the BBC.

In Amy’s view, as well as making it harder for people of all ages to escape gambling, that normalisation has created a dangerous subtext: that any adverse impacts – such as debt or addiction – are the fault of the individual, not the system.

“To go and watch a sporting event and see it saturated with betting advertising, you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m the problem. Because everyone does this’, you know what I mean?

“That’s what my brother thought.”

Like many advocates, she wants to see gambling reframed as a major public health issue rather than a recreational pursuit, given surveys have shown that nearly half of those engaging in the practice are at risk of, or already experience, its associated harms – such as financial hardship, family violence, depression, and suicide.

Research suggests that a prohibition on advertising could be the first step in achieving that aim. And advocates say there’s a well-trodden path the government could follow. Mr Thomas cites Australia’s decision to ban tobacco adverts in 1992 – which has been credited with dramatically reducing smoking rates – as proof of what’s possible.

But while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has described the “saturation of gambling advertising” as “untenable”, he’s yet to commit to a course of action.

Instead, he has pointed to his government’s other initiatives when questioned – such as banning credit card use in online wagering and creating a register for people to exclude themselves from betting sites. At times, he’s also framed gambling as an age-old problem.

“[This] has been an issue in our society I suspect, since man and woman walked, and had a bet on who could ride the horse the fastest or who could run from rock to rock, probably before there were buildings,” he told parliament on Wednesday.

The peak body representing Australia’s wagering companies has described a blanket ban as “a step too far” and thrown its weight behind the government’s proposed cap – which would limit ads online and during general TV programming.

“By doing this, the expectations of the community to see less advertising would be met, while also maintaining the crucial support to sporting codes and local broadcasters,” Responsible Wagering Australia’s CEO Kai Cantwell said in a statement.

But Dr Andrew Hughes, a lecturer in marketing at The Australian National University, has cast doubt over how crucial that financial support is – given that Nielsen data shows that the lion’s share of ad money the nation’s broadcasters take in comes from a range of other sectors, rather than betting platforms.

And independent senators, like David Pocock, have criticised the logic of using money from wagering to prop up the media.

“Journalism is incredibly important, but it shouldn’t be dependent on flogging products we know are harmful, and which cause addiction, personal issues, family breakdowns, and in some cases, suicide,” he told the BBC.

“The government should have the imagination to look at other ways of plugging that gap.”

Mr Pocock is one of several senators to publicly question whether betting companies and the industries they finance, are interfering with policy decisions – citing their extensive lobbying efforts and history of large political donations.

Last week, he joined 20 parliamentarians from across the political spectrum to sign an open letter backing a prohibition on advertising, while also calling for a free vote on the issue to allow MPs in Mr Albanese’s party to cross the floor, without facing repercussions.

Several medical bodies have also thrown their support behind a ban, as has an expert panel appointed by the government to probe how to bring down rates of domestic violence in Australia – adding to the mounting pressure Mr Albanese is facing.

The government already runs warnings on gambling advertisements reminding people of the risks.

But Sean says it does little to deter those caught in the crosshairs of addiction.

“I know the house always wins, but every time I’m ready to have a punt that all goes out the window,” he explains. “I start thinking I’m about to pull off that one win that’s going to take me away from everything. That win that’s going to get everything back.”

Although nothing has been finalised and Mr Albanese’s cabinet is still weighing its options, for Amy, the debate itself has become too “insensitive” to follow.

She can’t comprehend what the hold-up is and wants answers.

“Anyone who understands this issue would without a doubt agree to a full advertising ban – that’s what the evidence says,” she tells the BBC. “It feels like these lobbyists own the government… We’re dangling this dangerous product in front of everyone and normalising it, and the worst-case scenario is what happened to us.

“My family – they’ll never recover. It’s not something that you recover from.”

“Burn Gaza now, nothing less!” When the deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, posted this comment on X in November, the platform blocked him and asked him to delete it.

Nissim Vaturi did as they asked, and his account has since been reactivated, but he did not apologise. His comment is one of many controversial remarks that have been made by some high-profile Israelis as the country’s armed forces carry out air strikes and ground operations in Gaza, in response to Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October.

On the day of the attacks, he had posted: “Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth.”

That post, which is still visible on X, was cited in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in which South Africa alleges Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, in the Gaza war. Israel has called the case “wholly unfounded” and based on “biased and false claims”.

As part of an interim judgement in January, the ICJ ruled that Israel must prevent public statements inciting genocide. Although the court does not have the power to enforce this, Israel agreed to submit a report detailing the action it had taken to investigate and prosecute possible instances of incitement. The court confirmed that the report was received in February, but has not made its contents public.

Some legal experts believe Israel is not doing enough to investigate potential cases. “Israelis who incite genocide or use genocidal rhetoric are immune from prosecution,” says Israeli human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard.

Proving incitement to genocide, which is a crime under international and Israeli law, is difficult. Genocide is defined as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. But distinguishing between inciting genocide and inciting violence or racism – and what could be considered free speech – can be complex.

The BBC has looked at several pronouncements made since the ICJ’s order to see if they could break the ruling and consulted legal experts for their assessment. And although this judgement was directed at Israel, we have also examined language used by some Hamas officials who have made speeches about repeating their attack of 7 October.

A pro-Palestinian human rights organisation made up of a network of experts and researchers around the world who monitor the conflict, Law for Palestine, has looked at cases where it believes Israeli officials and other public figures have incited genocide. Its list includes some statements by Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Mr Ben-Gvir has been advocating a policy to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza, saying Israelis should settle there.

He leads an ultranationalist party which is widely criticised for espousing racially discriminatory, anti-Arab policies. He has previous convictions from an Israeli court – which date from before he entered government – for inciting racism and supporting terrorism.

Two days after the ICJ ruling in January, he advocated a policy to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza and replace them with Israeli settlers. He said that to avoid a repeat of Hamas’s attack on Israel “we need to return home and control the territory [Gaza]… encouraging migration and giving the death penalty to terrorists”, proposing that any emigration should be voluntary.

“We consider the calling to displacement of the Gaza population as part of the ethnic cleansing that is ongoing in Gaza,” says Law for Palestine’s founder, Ihsan Adel. He believes those calls should be considered incitement to genocide, and that genocide is happening – an accusation Israel denies.

Not everyone agrees with his assessment, though. “I’m definitely not going to defend such statements, but they do not rise to the level of genocide,” says Anne Herzberg, a legal adviser at NGO Monitor, which reports on international NGO activity from a pro-Israel perspective.

Neither Mr Ben-Gvir nor Mr Vaturi responded to BBC requests for comment.

The link between what politicians say and what Israeli soldiers say was a core part of South Africa’s case at the ICJ.

In a YouTube video from late 2023, a group of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers can be heard chanting: “Occupy, expel and settle.” And soldiers have made other videos since the ICJ ruling in January mocking and celebrating the destruction of Gaza.

The IDF told us that it examines reports of videos online and that if a criminal offence is suspected, the military police investigate and “in some of the examined cases, it is concluded that the expression or behaviour of the soldiers in the footage is inappropriate, and it is handled accordingly”.

The spotlight has also fallen on Israel’s religious leaders. Rabbi Eliyahu Mali attracted attention after he gave a talk in March at a conference for Israel’s Zionist yeshivas – Jewish religious schools with a strong belief in the State of Israel. Rabbi Mali is the head of a yeshiva that is part of a network that receives funding from Israel‘s Ministry of Defence. Its students mix Torah study with military service.

He described the talk as being about the “treatment of the civilian population in Gaza during the war”.

A clip of it was shared online. After citing a 12th Century Jewish scholar on holy wars, Rabbi Mali said: “[And if so] the basic rule that we have when we are fighting a mitzvah war, in this case Gaza, according to the scriptures, ‘You shall not let a soul remain alive,’ the explanation is very clear – if you don’t kill them, they will kill you.”

In Judaism, a mitzvah war is one which includes defending Jewish life and sovereignty and is considered obligatory as opposed to one of choice.

We contacted Rabbi Mali and a response, sent on his behalf, said that his words had been “grossly misrepresented by excerpts being taken out of context”.

It said that he had set out what the position was in ancient times but that he had “made it very clear that anyone following the Biblical commandment today would be causing the army and the nation extreme harm” and that under national law “it is forbidden to harm the civilian population from a child to an old man”.

We watched the full talk and on a few occasions he reminded the audience of those points, including in the conclusion, and also saying at the start: “You need to do exactly what the army orders say.”

However, during the talk, he specifically mentioned the people of Gaza saying: “I think there is a difference between the civilian population in other places and the civilian population in Gaza,” adding an unsubstantiated claim that “95% to 98% are interested in our demise, that’s a majority, that’s stupefying.”

When an audience member asked about babies he replied: ”The same… The Torah is saying: ‘You shall not let a soul remain alive’… Today he’s a baby, tomorrow he’s a boy, tomorrow he’s a warrior.”

In the talk, the rabbi also recounted what he said to his son, who went to fight after the 7 October attacks. He said he should “kill everything that moves”. He explained his position by adding that his son’s commander had told him the same thing and that he instructed his son to ”listen to the commander’s orders”.

Later, he reiterated that he did not expect soldiers to do what was laid out in the Torah. He said that if the laws of the state contradicted the laws of the Torah, it was the state law that should be followed and “the laws of the state only want to kill the terrorists and not the civilian population”.

Eitay Mack, a lawyer from the Israeli group Tag Meir that campaigns against racism and discrimination, says he has asked police to investigate the rabbi on suspicion of incitement to commit genocide, violence and terrorism.

He says he is still waiting to hear if the investigation he requested will be carried out.

Another claim made by South Africa at the ICJ hearing was about “genocidal messages being routinely broadcast – without censure or sanction – in Israeli media”.

In February, on the right-wing Channel 14, journalist Yaki Adamker said: “The Gazans, as far as I am concerned, can starve to death. What do I care about them?”

In April, an Israeli journalist on the most-watched channel in the country, Channel 12, Yehuda Schlesinger, echoed similar sentiments, saying: “There are no innocents in the Gaza Strip, there aren’t. They voted for Hamas, they want Hamas.”

For Anne Herzberg, from NGO Monitor, this may show “a disturbing lack of empathy for people in Gaza and what they’re going through,” but “it’s not calling for genocide”.

The BBC contacted both broadcasters but received no response. Yehuda Schlesinger replied, highlighting the atrocities of 7 October.

When it comes to whether the authorities should regulate what is broadcast more tightly, Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard warns that “regulators, which is the state, have to make sure that public broadcasting is not exploited” by people making provocative comments.

While the ICJ ruling on preventing inciting genocide was directed at Israel, Hamas has also been accused of making statements with “genocidal intent”.

“The annihilationist language of Hamas’s charter is repeated regularly by its leaders,” says Tal Becker, legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

In 2021, Yahya Sinwar, who has just become the overall leader of Hamas said: “We support the elimination of Israel through jihad and armed struggle, this is our doctrine.”

And, more recently, some Hamas officials have claimed they want to repeat the 7 October attacks, during which about 1,200 people were killed – mostly civilians – and 251 were taken hostage.

In November, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, Ghazi Hamad, said: “We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again.”

Around the same time, Hamas leader abroad, Khaled Mashaal, said that 7 October “opened a highway towards eliminating Israel”.

Hamas did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Many want to see the group – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the US, UK, EU and other countries – held to account.

“It’s quite clear that they do have genocidal intent, and we hear very little about investigating Hamas, and I think that’s a real missing piece in this entire conflict,” says Anne Herzberg from NGO Monitor.

The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese – whose own criticisms of Israeli actions have been strongly contested, in particular in Israel and the United States – agrees Hamas leaders should be held accountable. But she says: “When assessing genocide, one is to look at the words spoken by leaders, but also the capacity to commit genocide, which Hamas per se doesn’t seem to have.”

Unlike Israel, Hamas cannot be taken to the ICJ because it is not a state. However a different body, the International Criminal Court (ICC), can hold individuals to account. In May its prosecutor applied for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh (Haniyeh has since been killed in Iran and Israel says it killed Deif in Gaza) for crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He also sought warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Both Hamas and Israel reacted with outrage.

As for what Israeli authorities are doing to prevent and prosecute people suspected of inciting violence, the country’s attorney general and state attorney have acknowledged that any statements calling for intentional harm to civilians “may amount to a criminal offence, including the offence of incitement”. Just before the ICJ hearing in January they said that several cases were being examined.

Recently however, Haaretz reported that the state prosecutor recommended that no criminal investigations be opened against senior public figures, including ministers and members of Knesset, who have “called to harm civilians in the Gaza Strip”. The final decision rests with the attorney general.

The BBC contacted Israel’s state attorney, police commissioner and Ministry of Justice for comment. Only the Ministry of Justice replied, saying they have to balance “the constitutional right to freedom of speech… while safeguarding against harmful incitement”. They added: “Law enforcement authorities constantly act to curtail incitement offences, and these efforts have been prioritised by Israel’s attorney general in recent months.”

And as the ICJ continues to work toward a final ruling in its case, people continue to die – since October more than 40,000 Palestinians are reported to have been killed in Gaza, according to its Hamas-run health ministry.

Since Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire and founder of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested on landing in Paris on Saturday evening, there has been more speculation than substance about his fate.

The headline in a Russian newspaper summed up the story: “The arrest (or detention) of ‘Russia’s Zuckerberg’, Pavel Durov, is one of the most important, but mysterious global news stories,” declared Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

True.

Except that “mysterious” is a bit of an understatement.

Why did French police detain him? What charges will he face? Has it anything at all to do with his recent visit to Azerbaijan, where he met (or didn’t meet) Russian President Vladimir Putin?

For two days, reporters have quoted “sources close to the investigation” about the offences Pavel Durov may be charged with (allegedly, from complicity in drug-trafficking to fraud). Telegram put out a statement saying Mr Durov had “nothing to hide”.

On Monday evening, the Paris prosecutor said in a statement that Mr Durov was being held in custody as part of a cyber-criminality investigation.

The statement mentioned 12 different offences under investigation that it said were linked to organised crime.

These included illicit transactions, child pornography, fraud and the refusal to disclose information to authorities, the prosecutor said.

The statement added that Mr Durov’s time in custody had been extended and could now last until Wednesday.

Without going into detail, President Emmanuel Macron posted on social media that he had seen “false information” regarding France following Mr Durov’s arrest, and added: “This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide.”

In Moscow, the Kremlin is being cautious.

“We still don’t know what exactly Durov has been accused of,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday, in his first comments on Pavel Durov’s detention.

“We haven’t heard any official statements. Before I can say anything at all about this, we need some clarity.”

Clarity is not something of which everyone in Russia feels the need.

On Monday, state TV’s flagship political talk show had plenty to say on the matter.

“All these accusations against Durov sound absurd,” one political analyst in the studio declared. “Accusing him of all the crimes that are committed on his platform is like accusing [France’s] President Macron of all the crimes that happen in France. It’s the same logic.”

Russian newspapers, too, went big on the story. Several dailies expressed concern that Pavel Durov’s arrest could have serious consequences for Russia.

“This blow to Telegram threatens to be a blow to Russia,” wrote Nezavisimaya Gazeta. “With Pavel Durov’s arrest, Western intelligence services could obtain the messenger’s encryption keys.”

“Telegram might become a tool of Nato, if Pavel Durov is forced to obey the French intelligence services,” declared Moskovsky Komsomolets, adding: “Telegram chats contain a huge amount of vitally important, strategic information.”

In April 2018, the Russian authorities began blocking access to Telegram, only to lift the ban in 2020. Today, not only do Russian officials use the messenger, but so does the Russian military, including soldiers fighting in the so-called “Special Military Operation” (Russia’s war in Ukraine).

“If Telegram crashes,” Moskovsky Komsomolets asked today, “how is [our army] going to fight?”

In the West, Pavel Durov’s detention has sparked a debate about free speech.

In Russia, too, presidential human rights ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova claimed that “the real reason for arresting Pavel Durov was to shut down Telegram, a platform where you can discover the truth about what’s happening in the world. Everyone who strives for free speech protests this.”

Ms Moskalkova made no mention of the Signal messaging app, to which the Russian authorities blocked access earlier this month, or YouTube, access to which has been severely limited now in Russia. Facebook and Instagram have already been blocked here.

And what of those rumours of a Putin-Durov meeting in Baku earlier in August. Was there one?

“No,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied when I asked.

However this mysterious story ends, Moscow will use it to strengthen one of its official narratives: that Russian citizens should beware of the West.

As the popular tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda put it: “For the West, there is no such thing any more as ‘good Russians’.”

A standoff has erupted in the Philippines as thousands of police officers descended on a sprawling religious compound in search of an influential pastor who has been accused of child sex trafficking amongst other crimes.

Police say they will not leave until they have found Apollo Quiboloy, who calls himself the “appointed Son of God”.

He is believed to be hiding inside his 30 hectare (75 acres) complex, which houses some 40 buildings, including a cathedral, a school and even a hangar.

Authorities have been on the hunt for Mr Quiboloy for months. He had earlier said he would “not be caught alive”.

Police raided the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) compound late on Saturday, with reports saying they later used tear gas against Mr Quiboloy’s followers who had become “unruly and violent”, Davao police spokesperson Major Catherina dela Rey told news outlet Rappler.

Hundreds of Mr Quiboloy’s followers have blocked parts of a major highway in an attempt to disrupt traffic to the compound.

They maintain his innocence, saying allegations against him are fabricated.

One supporter of the group died from a heart attack during the police raid.

Police believe Mr Quiboloy is hiding in an underground bunker based on equipment that is believed to be able to detect people behind walls based on their heartbeat, said Maj dela Rey.

Mr Quiboloy’s KOJC claims to have seven million followers and he has grown his ministry through television, radio and social media.

He is also politically influential and serves as spiritual adviser to former President Rodrigo Duterte, whose family rules Davao city politics.

Since Mr Duterte stepped down in 2022, authorities have been pursuing charges against Mr Quiboloy.

He is accused of trafficking his followers to the US to solicit donations for bogus charities. He also allegedly required his female followers, some underage, to have sex with him as a religious duty.

He has said that the “devil” was behind his legal woes. He has also said that he does not want the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to “meddle” in his case.

Mr Quiboloy said in April that he was “preserving” himself by hiding from authorities.

“I am not hiding from the charges because I am guilty. That’s not true. I am just protecting myself,” he said.

Mr Quiboloy is the leader of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, a Christian sect that claims to have seven million members.

He claims to have heard God whisper to him “I will use you” while attending an event by American pastor Billy Graham in South Korea in 1973. This led him to set up the KOJC in the Philippines’ Davao in 1985.

Mr Quiboloy preaches from a glass table that is set against giant photographs of his lush hilltop estate called the “Garden of Eden Restored”.

When he is not in Davao, he has been seen travelling on his private jet.

His rise to national prominence has mirrored that of Mr Duterte. Both started in Davao, where the former president served as mayor.

When Mr Duterte was elected president in 2016, Mr Quiboloy’s profile rose even higher. But that started to diminish when Mr Duterte left office in 2022.

Outside of his alliance with Mr Duterte, Mr Quiboloy has also gained considerable clout by endorsing politicians during elections.

Mr Quiboloy was a supporter of one of Duterte’s predecessors, Gloria Arroyo.

When he endorsed Arroyo’s choice of successor in the 2010 elections, Mr Quiboloy claimed to have seen the candidate’s name in a vision that included then US President Barack Obama.

In the Philippines, leaders of religious organisations and sects become politically powerful when they direct their followers to vote as a bloc, analysts say.

Electoral contests can get so cutthroat that some candidates believe the endorsement of leaders like Mr Quiboloy could make or break their campaign.

“Politics in the Philippines is very much a moral exercise. Therefore, voters look to their religious leaders for guidance,” political scientist Cleve Arguelles told BBC News.

In 2021, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Mr Quiboloy with sex trafficking of children, fraud and coercion and bulk cash smuggling.

The FBI said he trafficked girls and women from the Philippines to the US, where they are forced to solicit money for a bogus charity.

He also required his female personal assistants, who are called “pastorals”, to have sex with him, the FBI said.

In January 2022, the FBI released a wanted poster seeking information on Mr Quiboloy’s whereabouts.

Last March, the Philippines DOJ filed human trafficking and sexual harassment charges against Mr Quiboloy, for allegedly abusing a teenage woman in 2011.

Courts in both the US and Philippine have issued warrants for his arrest.

Mr Quiboloy has denied the charges against him and has accused US authorities of pre-judging his case.

It was late at night on 7 May 2022 when a Russian missile hit a museum that was once home to Ukraine’s 18th-Century poet and philosopher Hryhory Skovoroda.

“The roof was completely blown off, the walls are burnt and only Skovoroda’s statue survived. It’s a miracle that it did,” says Nastya Ishchenko, deputy director of the museum in the Kharkiv region of north-eastern Ukraine.

It is one of 432 cultural sites damaged in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, according to the UN’s cultural organisation Unesco.

The destruction of so much of their culture has not just pushed Ukrainians farther away from the Russian-dominated cultural space they shared for decades under Soviet rule.

It has also awakened a hunger for their own culture, described by one daily newspaper as a “Ukrainian cultural boom”.

In total, 139 religious sites have been hit, 214 buildings of historical or artistic interest, 31 museums, 32 monuments, 15 libraries and one archive.

The management at the Hryhoriy Skovoroda Museum knew it might come under attack and most of its valuable artefacts had been evacuated to a safer location.

There was nothing military about the museum or its surroundings.

Ukraine’s museums in areas occupied by Russia have faced a very different problem. The full extent of plunder by Russian troops came to light in the final days of the occupation of the southern city of Kherson.

Entire truckloads of artworks and historical artefacts were removed by Russians – ostensibly, for “safekeeping”.

The Kherson Art Museum says it has identified 120 artworks taken to Crimea – another occupied area of Ukraine. But the total number of artefacts the museum has lost is more than 10,000.

In some museums in occupied parts of Ukraine, Russians removed exhibits for propaganda purposes. For example, an exhibition on Ukraine’s modern history in Berdyansk has been replaced with one glorifying the “special military operation” – the Kremlin’s official name for the war against Ukraine.

Last May, another aspect of modern Ukrainian culture came under attack with the destruction of the Faktor Druk printing house in Kharkiv, used by almost all Ukrainian book publishers.

Not every cultural building has been hit on purpose, although the attack on Faktor Druk, which killed seven people and destroyed 50,000 books, was widely seen as a targeted strike.

Other buildings have been hit because of their proximity to other buildings or to make them unusable for Ukrainian officials or troops.

One publisher described the destruction of books at Faktor Druk as leading to a decline in morale in society. And the disappearance of numerous cultural sites in Ukraine has placed its very social fabric under strain.

They are vital for the cohesion and resilience of communities at a time of war, says the head of Unesco’s desk in Ukraine, Chiara Dezzi Bardeschi.

“What I’ve seen is communities really asking for culture and their cultural centres. They recognise its importance for the community and they need it for their resilience. Culture is very important for healing trauma,” she tells the BBC.

Ukraine’s acting culture minister, Rostyslav Karandeyev, believes that Russia is deliberately targeting the country’s spiritual and historical symbols: “Not just military targets and critical infrastructure, but also anything that allows Ukrainians to speak of their own identity and statehood.”

As part of this policy, Russian forces have been removing and destroying Ukrainian books from schools and libraries in occupied areas, he told the BBC.

But amid all the gloom, Nastya Ishchenko from the Skovoroda museum believes Ukrainians have also started to value more what is under threat from the Russian invasion.

“It’s like in a relationship: to understand what you’ve lost, it has to be taken away,” she says. “We’re uniting not around aggression or anger, but around cultural values which each of us will hand down to future generations. It gives us a ray of light.”

Den newspaper describes how bands, performers and writes are appearing, with new plays premiered and theatres full.

Ukraine’s numerous volunteers have not just provided vital provisions and supplies of clothing and medicines, but musical instruments too.

“Children said that music helped them emotionally, it took them to a place where they don’t hear bombs or sirens. It helps them enormously,” UK-based musician Irina Gould told the BBC’s podcast Ukrainecast.

“For them it’s the best medicine, just to get away from reality and live in a world of beauty and happiness.”

As record numbers of young Africans risk their lives trying to reach the Canary Islands, Spain’s prime minister begins crisis talks with Senegal, Mauritania and The Gambia to tackle migration.

But this will come as little comfort to Amina.

“I found out that my son had died on social media,” she tells the BBC from her home near Senegal’s capital.

“We used to talk all the time and he told me he wanted to go to Morocco,” the 50-year-old says.

“He never mentioned he was planning to take a boat.”

She last heard from her son, Yankhoba, in January. A soul-crushing, six-month search for the devoted 33-year-old tailor proved fruitless.

Then, in early August, fishermen discovered his body on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, about 18km (11 miles) off the coast of the Dominican Republic.

At least 14 decomposing bodies were on that small, wooden boat, say local police. Mobile phones and personal documents found alongside them indicated that most were from Senegal, Mauritania and Mali.

Among the items on board was Yankhoba’s identity card.

Dominican authorities also reported the presence of 12 packages containing drugs.

Analysis is being carried out to determine the time and cause of the deaths, although it is presumed that the passengers had been trying to reach the Canary Islands and had got lost. Their boat was typical of the wooden fishing boats often used to transport illegal migrants from West Africa towards Europe.

Yankhoba was his mother’s first child and only son. It is a position which comes with a great deal of responsibility in Senegalese society.

The young tailor is survived by his wife and two young children, including one he did not live long enough to see.

Before Amina learnt of her son’s death, she appealed for help from missing person pages on Facebook and asked social media influencers with big followings to highlight his case.

“I held on to the belief that Yankhoba might have been held in a prison somewhere in Morocco or maybe even in Tunisia,” she says, her voice breaking.

Young West African migrants trying to reach Europe are increasingly choosing the Canary Islands route over the Mediterranean alternative.

Despite the dangers, it involves just one step, rather than needing to cross both the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean.

Last year alone the Atlantic route saw a 161% increase compared to the previous year, says the European Union border agency, Frontex.

Spain is one of the European countries that receives the most migrants.

As for the people leaving Senegal, a growing number of them are middle-class workers able to afford the more expensive journey to the US instead of Europe.

That is what Fallou did.

Despite running a successful sheep and bird farm in Dakar for almost a decade, he was struggling.

“I felt stuck. On top of running my business, I was also working in a factory, but I struggled to make ends meet,” he recalls.

So at the age of 30, he sold everything he owned and bought a one-way plane ticket to Nicaragua in Central America. From there, he would attempt the overland journey to the US.

Fallou was encouraged to leave by his older brother, already based in the US, and by countless pictures and videos of Senegalese people on TikTok sharing their trek through Central America.

“My mother didn’t want me to go, but I was ready to face death,” he says.

Fallou travelled for 16 days, passing through Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, with the help of smugglers. In total he spent more than $10,000 (£7,600) on the journey.

By contrast, poorer migrants who take the boat from Senegal to the Canary Islands typically pay smugglers around $450.

Fallou says that his sacrifice came with its share of horrors.

“Several people died before my eyes,” he says.

“But I saw some women who kept going, even with their children on their backs, and I thought: ‘I have to stay strong.’”

After being held in a US detention camp for a few days, Fallou was eventually given leave to remain as an asylum seeker. He has since been reunited with his brother and now works as a mechanic.

Fallou was lucky, but many African migrants to the US are not.

Last September, more than 140 Senegalese people were deported back home after crossing the Mexico-US border.

Human rights groups and diaspora communities who support the new arrivals report that shelters are often overwhelmed with such cases.

Some migrants have no option but to sleep on the street. Others may be allowed to stay temporarily in mosques.

Despite West Africans’ growing interest in alternative migration routes, it is still the case that most African migrants attempt to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.

Over the last decade, the UN’s migration body (IOM) says more than 28,000 migrants have drowned in that one body of water alone.

“People are leaving [West Africa] because they are faced with an explosive cocktail of security, institutional, nutritional, sanitary, post-Covid and environmental problems,” says immigration expert Aly Tandian.

The number of people leaving Senegal in particular is rising, despite being a relatively peaceful country with a new president who is promising to create jobs for young people.

Since the new government was elected in March, it has succeeded in reducing the price of some basic necessities, including oil, bread and rice – therefore easing the cost-of-living squeeze.

But it is not enough.

“We all thought that the hope raised by the change of regime would halt the resurgence of these migratory flows, but unfortunately this has not been the case,” says Boubacar Sèye, head of the non-government organisation, Horizon Without Borders.

“Despair and doubt have permeated our sociological environment, to the point where people no longer believe that their destiny can be fulfilled here,” he adds.

Mr Sèye has written a formal letter to the Senegalese authorities, pleading for an investigation into what happened to the boat found off the Dominican Republic.

He says reports show “there is a criminal economy surrounding these irregular migrations. Trafficking in drugs, arms, human beings and also organs”.

In July, after 89 bodies were found in a boat off the Mauritanian coast, Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko made a public plea to young people not to take the perilous Atlantic route to Europe.

“The future of the world lies in Africa, and you, young people need to be aware of that,” he said.

Yet, for the large number of young Africans still risking their lives to reach Europe and the US, that future is anywhere but at home.

• Four sons set out on a perilous migration route – only one came home
• Fourteen days across the Atlantic, perched on a ship’s rudder
• What is Senegal like?

When your music goes to the darkest of places, people respond. And Cassyette isn’t afraid of the shadows.

Over the last four years, the Brighton-based musician has dealt with life-changing problems. Her father died unexpectedly in 2020, triggering a period of substance and alcohol abuse that amplified her struggles with bipolar disorder, while her career was suddenly taking off.

She wrote her debut album in the midst of chaos, pouring all of those experiences into 15 gritty, eviscerating songs that swerve between rock, emo, pop, screamo and nu metal.

“It all just spewed out,” she says. “There are songs I made when I was in a high episode of mania, and there’s songs where I was in real lows.

“Darkness is woven throughout the album because that’s where I was at the time, but there are different shades of darkness within it.”

That means the album can switch from the bubblegum melodies of Sugar Rush (about the thrill of chasing highs in the throes of addiction) to the pulverising chords of Porcelain, where the 29-year-old confronts the fragility of life.

With a unvarnished honesty, she titled the record This World [Expletive] Sucks.

“It was necessary, I was angry,” she says.

The musician was born Cassy Brooking in Essex the mid-1990s. In her youth, she was a convent-educated clarinet student. Then she discovered bands like Paramore, Korn, and Black Sabbath.

The sense of release was intoxicating. As a queer teenager in a strict religious environment, she often felt like a misfit or a reject. But bands like Motley Crue, with their OTT theatrics, hinted at a world where she could fit in.

By chance, her neighbour was a producer with an “insane guitar collection”. He needed a female vocalist for a “dark musical” he’d written, and it was there that Cassyette found her voice – ragged but powerful, always one step away from disintegrating with emotion.

After studying songwriting at university, she had a stint as a club DJ, playing at legendary fetish club Torture Garden and London drag event Sink The Pink.

Before long, those electronic textures seeped into her music, with bass drops and drum loops adding raw energy to her sawtooth guitar riffs.

And like every other musician under the sun, she blew up on TikTok during the pandemic, thanks partly to her ability to produce gale-force screams, even when covering Lady Gaga.

Early singles like Dear Goth and Prison Purse caught the attention of rebel icons like Debbie Harry and Liam Howlett of the Prodigy (who sprinkled some “magic dust” on her 2022 single Boom).

With her star rising, she played to packed-out tents at Glastonbury and Download. Then Bryan Adams asked her to tour with him.

If you think that seems like an odd fit, you’re right.

“Yeah it’s a pretty different audience,” she laughs, “but I played some of my more chilled, heartfelt stuff and it was really nice.”

She even ended up bonding with the Summer Of ’69 singer, who dutifully came to watch her show every night.

“He took my number afterwards – and he just checks up on me every now and then,” she beams. “He’s such a shining light.”

If you weren’t at Bryan’s UK tour, you may also have caught Cassyette at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, where she co-wrote the gothic horrorfest Doomsday Blue entry for Irish singer Bambie Thug.

It was, she says, a project they dreamed up together on a whim.

“It was absolutely bananas because the year before Bambie was on it, we watched the contest in my living room and we were all like, “Hmm, Bambs, you’d be really, really good at this!”

“And then they just went and made it happen! So it was crazy just to see Bambie seize it. They’re a true punk, and they are such a such a great artist and person.”

The song eventually took sixth place, and the experience also allowed Cassyette to meet Ireland’s former Eurovision contestants Jedward – who have now become some of her biggest supporters, even staging a brilliantly messy livestream to promote her debut album.

“Oh, I love them. They’re just absolute babes,” she says, while sidestepping the question of whether they’d ever duet.

“I think… I think… I think we’d have creative differences!” she says.

“But I’d be keen to write them a song of their own. They have a bit of a George Michael vibe in the way that they sing and I’d love to explore that, because I’m a massive George Michael fan.”

That’s one of the dichotomies of Casyette’s music. Like a lot of rock’s new generation – Nova Twins, Halestorm, Yungblud – she sees no distinction between the shiny allure of a pop hook and the meaty viscera of heavy metal.

“I guess it’s just cherry picking the music that I’ve grown up loving,” she says.

“Everything I make is going to be infused with what I like… and I like a lot of different things.”

Reviews for her debut album have been glowing. Metal Hammer said it “feels like a vision for the future”. The Skinny praised its “cut-deep lyrics” and “powerhouse voice”.

“The album does absolute justice to her status as a new, genre-defying voice in rock,” wrote DIY magazine.

Every review singles out one track in particular: When She Told Me – an acid-burned snapshot of the moment Casyette was told her father had died.

It was a bolt from the blue. Tim Brooking was healthy and fit – a former pole vaulter and bobsleigh racer, who competed for Britain and whose cousin was former England footballer Sir Trevor Brooking.

No-one expected him to have a heart attack. In the song, Cassyette describes it as her world turning upside down. Astonishingly, it’s not a metaphor.

“This really weird thing happened where my entire vision flipped upside down,” she says.

“I found out later it’s a phenomenon that can happen when your brain’s overwhelmed. You can’t function properly. And basically, that happened to me.

“It was only for about 10 seconds, but it was really scary. Everything was upside down and moving in slow motion, like the world was caving in.

“I can’t forget it. It’s something I have flashbacks to quite a lot. So I felt I needed to write about it – an explanation of exactly what the feeling was, that I can go back to and listen to when I want to re-contextualize it.”

That’s how a lot of her songs start.

Cassyette says she often feels things physically before she understands them – so she jots down the symptoms, and returns to them later to examine why she feels uncomfortable or elated or exhausted.

“I’m gonna say the cliché thing, but music is therapy for a lot of artists, and it is for me.

“I’ll only write something if there’s an intention behind it.”

As you can imagine, fans who’ve been through similarly tough experiences are compelled to share their stories with the singer.

“Oh my God, it happens all the time,” she says. “And I’m like, ‘I’m here for you, but I’m not qualified to help!’”

With that in mind, she’s started arming herself with contacts for people who need help.

“Some people will be like, ‘You got me through this’. And I’m like, ‘No, you got yourself through it – but if your only outlet has been my song, then you need to go and have conversations with other people about how you’re feeling’.”

If she keeps this up, Cassyette’s corner of the world won’t suck so hard, after all.

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said that big polluters have a clear responsibility to cut emissions – or risk a worldwide catastrophe.

“The Pacific is today the most vulnerable area of the world,” he told the BBC at the Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga. “There is an enormous injustice in relation to the Pacific and it’s the reason I am here.”

“The small islands don’t contribute to climate change but everything that happens because of climate change is multiplied here.”

But eventually the “surging seas are coming for us all,” he warned in a speech at the forum, as the UN releases two separate reports on rising sea levels and how they threaten Pacific island nations.

The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in the South West Pacific report says this region faces a triple whammy of an accelerating rise in the sea level, a warming of the ocean and acidification – a rise in the sea’s acidity because it’s absorbing more and more carbon dioxide.

“The reason is clear: greenhouse gases – overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels – are cooking our planet,” Mr Guterres said in a speech at the forum.

“The sea is taking the heat – literally.”

This year’s theme – transformative resilience – was tested on the opening day when the new auditorium was deluged by heavy rains and buildings evacuated because of an earthquake.

“It’s such a stark reminder of how volatile things are within our region, and how important it is that we need to prepare for everything,” Joseph Sikulu, Pacific director at 350, a climate change advocacy group, told the BBC.

Not far from the venue was a street parade, with dancers representing the region, including Torres Strait islanders, Tongans and Samoans. At the start of the parade, a big banner reads: “We are not drowning, we are fighting”. Another says: “Sea levels are rising – so are we”.

It echoes a challenge that threatens to wipe out their world – the UN Climate Action Team released a report called “Surging Seas in a Warming World” showing that global average sea levels are rising at rates unprecedented in the past 3,000 years.

According to the report, the levels have risen an average of 9.4cm (3.7in) in the past 30 years but in the tropical Pacific, that figure was as high as 15cm.

“It’s important for leaders, especially like Australia and Aotearoa, to come and witness these things for themselves, but also witness the resilience of our people,” Mr Sikulu said.

“A core part of Tongan culture is our ability to be able to continue to be joyful throughout our adversity, and that’s how we practise our resilience and to see and witness that, I think is going to be important.”

This is the second time Secretary-General Guterres has participated in the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. The annual meeting brings together leaders from 18 Pacific Islands, including Australia and New Zealand.

As leaders convened for the official opening ceremony, heavy rain caused extensive flooding. Shortly afterwards, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the Tonga region, highlighting just how vulnerable it is.

In 2019, Mr Guterres travelled to Tuvalu where he sounded the alarm about rising sea levels. Five years on, he says he has seen real changes.

“We see everywhere an enormous commitment to resist, a commitment to reduce the negative impact of climate change,” he told the BBC. “The problem is, the Pacific Islands also suffer another big injustice – the international financial instruments that exist to support countries in distress were not designed for countries like this.”

Mr Guterres on Monday visited local communities whose livelihoods are threatened by rising sea levels. They’ve been waiting for seven years for a decision to be made on the funding of a sea wall.

“The bureaucracy, the complexity, the lack of sense of urgency because it’s a small island, far away,” he said, citing the failings of the international financial system, especially when it comes to small, developing island states.

“There are promises of increases of money available for adaptation in developing countries but the truth is we are far from what is needed, from the solidarity that is needed for these countries to be able to exist.”

Many Pacific islanders here at the conference single out the biggest regional donor and emitter – Australia.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia would be ramping up its extraction and use of gas until “2050 and beyond,” despite calls to phase out fossil fuels.

“There is an essential responsibility of the big polluters,” Mr Guterres said, when asked by the BBC what message he has for regional emitters like Australia.

Without that, the world will breach the threshold of 1.5C that was established in the Paris Agreement in 2015. That agreement aims to limit global warming to “well below” 2C by the end of the century, and “pursue efforts” to keep warming within the safer limit of 1.5C.

“Only by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius do we have a fighting chance of preventing the irreversible collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets – and the catastrophes that accompany them,” Mr Guterres said.

“That means cutting global emissions 43% compared to 2019 levels by 2030, and 60% by 2035.”

Last year though, global emissions rose 1%.

“There is an obligation of the G20 that represent 80% of emissions – there’s an obligation for them to come together, to guarantee a reduction of emissions now,” Mr Guterres said.

Singling out the G20 as well as companies who contribute to much of the world’s global emissions, he added: “They have a clear responsibility to reverse the current trend. It’s time to say ‘enough’.”

A New York federal judge has ordered “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli to surrender any copies he possesses of a rare, unreleased Wu-Tang Clan album.

Shkreli, a former drug firm executive, previously forfeited the album’s only physical copy to pay off court debts – after being convicted in 2017 of securities fraud.

But the album’s current owner has accused Shkreli of retaining digital copies and playing the music for others, breaking the forfeiture order.

Shkreli has been told to turn over all copies of the album by the end of the week.

Multi-platinum hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clain created just one copy of the album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, and auctioned it in 2015 under the condition it could never be released publicly.

The group spent six years on the 31-track album and wanted it to be viewed as a piece of contemporary art.

It was sold for a reported $2m (£1.5m) to Shkreli – a man who became infamous that same year for dramatically increasing the price of a life-saving drug known as Daraprim; a move he later walked back.

In 2017, Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud after lying to investors and cheating them out of millions.

He was ordered to forfeit $7.4m to the US government and surrender a set of assets that included the Wu-Tang album, CNBC reports.

Shkreli was released from jail in 2022 after serving the majority of a seven-year sentence.

The accusation that he retained digital copies of the album was made by PleasrDAO, a cryptocurrency collective which has filed a lawsuit against him.

The collective now owns the physical copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. having paid a reported $4.75m for it.

The federal judge last month blocked Mr Shkreli from streaming or sharing the record. Her new order, issued on Monday, prevents him from possessing the album and its contents.

A lawyer for PleasrDAO said the ruling was “an important victory”.

Shkreli’s own legal representative referred to the ongoing lawsuit his client was fighting: “This order is merely a preliminary measure entered by the court to maintain the perceived status quo before any discovery occurs – the order has no bearing whatsoever on the final outcome of the case.”

US soldier Travis King, who fled from South to North Korea before being returned home, will plead guilty to desertion and other charges, his lawyer has said.

The army filed 14 charges against Mr King for the illegal crossing in July 2023. He plans to enter a guilty plea to five charges, including desertion and assault, as part of a plea deal.

“He will plead not guilty to the remaining offenses, which the Army will withdraw and dismiss,” his lawyer Franklin Rosenblatt said in a statement to BBC News.

His plea and sentencing hearing will take place on 20 September at a military base in Fort Bliss, Texas.

“Travis’s guilty plea will be entered at a general court-martial,” Mr Rosenblatt said in an emailed statement on Monday.

“There, he will explain what he did, answer a military judge’s questions about why he is pleading guilty, and be sentenced.”

Mr King is grateful to support from his family and friends and to all those who did not “pre-judge” him based on the allegations, the lawyer added.

Charges expected to be dismissed as part of the plea deal include possession of child pornography.

Pvt King has been in the army since January 2021 and was in South Korea as part of a unit rotation when he crossed into North Korea.

Prior to that incident, he had served two months in detention in South Korea on charges that he had assaulted two people and kicked a police car.

He was released from custody on 10 July – eight days before he crossed the country’s border with Pyongyang.

His release deal was brokered by Swedish officials, who brought Pvt King to North Korea’s border with China.

Little is known about how he was treated in North Korea, why he fled there in the first place, and why Pyongyang expelled him.

The US has said it made no concessions to secure his release.

Canada says it will impose a 100% tariff on imports of China-made electric vehicles (EV) after similar announcements by the US and European Union.

The country also plans to impose a 25% duty on Chinese steel and aluminium.

Canada and its Western allies accuse China of subsidising its EV industry, giving its car makers an unfair advantage.

China has called the move “trade protectionism” which “violates World Trade Organization rules”.

“We are transforming Canada’s automotive sector to be a global leader in building the vehicles of tomorrow, but actors like China have chosen to give themselves an unfair advantage in the global marketplace”, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canada’s duties on Chinese EVs are due to come into effect on 1 October, while those on steel and aluminium will be implemented from 15 October.

A Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson said Canada’s actions “seriously undermine the global economic system, and economic and trade rules”.

“China urges the Canadian side to immediately correct its erroneous practices,” they added.

China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, behind the US.

In May, the US said it would quadruple its tariffs on imports of Chinese EVs to 100%.

That was followed by the EU, which announced plans to impose duties on China-made EVs of up to 36.3%.

Canada’s tariffs on Chinese EVs will include those made by Tesla at its Shanghai factory.

“Tesla will almost certainly be lobbying the Canadian government to get some leeway on these tariffs, as they have already with Europe,” said Mark Rainford, a China-based car industry commentator.

“If they fail at mitigating the tariff enough, they’ll likely look at switching their Canadian imports to either the US or European factories since Canada is their 6th largest market this year and thus not insignificant.”

Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment from BBC News.

Earlier this month, the EU cut its planned extra tariff on China-made Teslas by more than half, after further investigations requested by Elon Musk’s car maker.

Chinese car brands are still not a common sight in Canada but some, like BYD, have taken steps to enter the country’s market.

China is the world’s largest manufacturer of EVs and its car makers have quickly gained a significant share of the global market.

Meanwhile, Canada has struck deals worth billions of dollars with major European car makers, as it tries to become a key part of the global EV industry.

Government officials in Brazil say they suspect “criminals” are behind a record number of fires which have devastated large swathes of São Paulo state.

The head of Brazil’s National Office for Protection and Civil Defence, Wolnei Wolff, said 99.9% of the blazes in the state had been caused by human action.

He said there had been no lightning strikes or downed high voltage cables which would account for the large amount of blazes.

Four people have been arrested.

Environment Minister Marina Silva called the situation “unusual”, saying her team had not seen so many fires ignite in far-flung locations at the same time.

Officials have not said what the motive of those setting the fires may have been, but said the fact they had broken out simultaneously in different parts of the state indicated they had been set on purpose.

Data from the space agency Inpe suggests the number of fires burning in São Paulo in the month of August has been higher than in any August since it started collecting data in 1998.

The agency has registered 5,281 so far this month, compared with 1,104 in the same period last year.

Two people have died and more than 20,000 hectares have been destroyed. Large sugarcane fields are among those razed to the ground.

São Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas said high temperatures, strong winds and low humidity meant the flames had spread particularly quickly.

Several cities, including São Paulo and the capital, Brasilia, were engulfed in acrid smoke over the weekend.

He added that firefighters had managed to extinguish the fires as of Monday but said 48 municipalities would remain on maximum alert to prevent new blazes from breaking out.

Australia will introduce a cap on the number of new international students it accepts, as it tries to reduce overall migration to pre-pandemic levels.

The nation has one of the biggest international student markets in the world, but the number of new enrolments will be limited to 270,000 for 2025.

Each higher education institution will be given an individual restriction, the government announced on Tuesday, with the biggest cuts to be borne by vocational education and training providers.

The change has angered the tertiary education industry, with some universities calling it “economic vandalism”, but Canberra says it will improve the quality and longevity of the sector.

Australia is host to about 717,500 international students, according to the latest government figures from early 2024.

Education Minister Jason Clare acknowledged that higher education was hard-hit during the pandemic, when Australia sent foreign students home and introduced strict border controls.

He also noted, however, that the number of international students at universities is now 10% higher than before Covid-19, while the number at private vocational and training providers is up 50%.

“Students are back but so are the shonks – people are seeking to exploit this industry to make a quick buck,” Mr Clare said.

The government has previously accused some providers of “unethical” behaviour – including accepting students who don’t have the language skills to succeed, offering a poor standard of education or training, and enrolling people who intend to work instead of study.

“These reforms are designed to make it better and fairer, and set it up on a more sustainable footing going forward,” Mr Clare said.

The restrictions will also help address Australia’s record migration levels, he said, which have added pressure to existing housing and infrastructure woes.

The government has already announced tougher minimum English-language requirements for international students and more scrutiny of those applying for a second study visa, while punishing hundreds of “dodgy” providers.

Enrolments at public universities will be pared back to 145,000 in 2025, which is around their 2023 levels, Mr Clare said.

Private universities and non-university higher education providers will be able to enrol 30,000 new international students, while vocational education and training institutions will be limited to 95,000.

The policy would also include incentives for universities to build more housing for international students, Mr Clare added.

But higher education providers say the industry is being made a “fall guy” for housing and migration issues, and that a cap would decimate the sector.

International education was worth A$36.4bn (£18.7bn, $24.7) to the Australian economy in 2022-23, making it the country’s fourth largest export that year.

According to economic modelling commissioned earlier this year by Sydney University – where foreign students make up about half of enrolments – the proposed cuts could cost the Australian economy $4.1bn and result in about 22,000 job losses in 2025.

Vicki Thomson, chief executive of a body which represents some of Australia’s most prestigious universities, described the proposed laws as “draconian” and “interventionist”, saying they amounted to “economic vandalism” in comments made earlier this year.

Mr Clare accepted that some service providers may have to make difficult budget decisions, but denied the cap would cripple the industry.

“To create the impression that this is somehow tearing down international education is absolutely and fundamentally wrong,” he said.

Imagine picking up a nice juicy apple – but instead of biting into it you keep the seeds and throw the rest away.

That’s what chocolate producers have traditionally done with the cocoa fruit – used the beans and disposed of the rest.

But now food scientists in Switzerland have come up with a way to make chocolate using the entire cocoa fruit rather than just the beans – and without using sugar.

The chocolate, developed at Zurich’s prestigious Federal Institute of Technology by scientist Kim Mishra and his team includes the cocoa fruit pulp, the juice, and the husk, or endocarp.

The process has already attracted the attention of sustainable food companies.

They say traditional chocolate production, using only the beans, involves leaving the rest of the cocoa fruit – the size of a pumpkin and full of nutritious value – to rot in the fields.

The key to the new chocolate lies in its very sweet juice, which tastes, Mr Mishra explains, “very fruity, a bit like pineapple”.

This juice, which is 14% sugar, is distilled down to form a highly concentrated syrup, combined with the pulp and then, taking sustainability to new levels, mixed with the dried husk, or endocarp, to form a very sweet cocoa gel.

The gel, when added to the cocoa beans to make chocolate, eliminates the need for sugar.

Mr Mishra sees his invention as the latest in a long line of innovations by Swiss chocolate producers.

In the 19th Century, Rudolf Lindt, of the famous Lindt chocolate family, accidentally invented the crucial step of “conching” the chocolate – rolling the warm cocoa mass to make it smooth and reduce its acidity – by leaving a cocoa mass mixer running overnight. The result in the morning? Deliciously smooth, sweet chocolate.

“You need to be innovative to maintain your product category,” says Mr Mishra. “Or… you will just make average chocolate.”

Mr Mishra was partnered in his project by KOA, a Swiss start-up working in sustainable cocoa growing. Its co-founder, Anian Schreiber, believes using the entire cocoa fruit could solve many of the cocoa industry’s problems, from the soaring price of cocoa beans to endemic poverty among cocoa farmers.

“‘Instead of fighting over who gets how much of the cake, you make the cake bigger and make everybody benefit,” he explains.

“The farmers get significantly extra income through utilising cocoa pulp, but also the important industrial processing is happening in the country of origin. Creating jobs, creating value that can be distributed in the country of origin.”

Mr Schreiber describes the traditional system of chocolate production, in which farmers in Africa or South America sell their cocoa beans to big chocolate producers based in wealthy countries as “unsustainable”.

The model is also questioned by a new exhibition in Geneva, which explores Switzerland’s colonial past.

To those who point out that Switzerland never had any colonies of its own, chocolate historian Letizia Pinoja counters that Swiss mercenary soldiers policed other countries’ colonies, and Swiss ship owners transported slaves.

Geneva in particular, she says, has a particular link to some of the most exploitative phases of the chocolate industry.

“Geneva is a hub for commodity trade, and since the 18th Century, cocoa was reaching Geneva and then the rest of Switzerland to produce chocolate.

“Without this commodity trade of colonial goods, Switzerland could never have become the land of chocolate. And cocoa is no different from any other kind of colonial good. They all came from slavery.”

• Listen to Business Daily: Swiss chocolate breakthrough

Nowadays, the chocolate industry is much more highly regulated. Producers are supposed to monitor their entire supply chain to make sure there is no child labour. And, from next year, all chocolate imported to the European Union must guarantee that no deforestation took place to grow the cocoa used in it.

But does that mean all the problems are solved? Roger Wehrli, director of the association of Swiss chocolate manufacturers, Chocosuisse, says cases of child labour and deforestation remain, particularly in Africa. He fears that some producers, in a bid to avoid the challenges, are simply shifting their production to South America.

“Does this solve the problem in Africa? No. I guess it would be better for responsible firms to stay in Africa and help to improve the situation.”

That is why Mr Wehrli sees the new chocolate developed in Zurich as “very promising… If you use the whole cocoa fruit, you can get better prices. So it’s economically interesting for the farmers. And it’s interesting from an ecological point of view.”

The link between chocolate production and the environment is also stressed by Anian Schreiber. A third of all farm produce, he says, “never ends up in our mouths”.

Those statistics are even worse for cocoa, if the fruit is abandoned to use only the beans. “It’s like you throw away the apple and just use its seeds. That’s what we do right now with the cocoa fruit.”

Food production involves significant greenhouse gas emissions, so reducing food waste could also help to tackle climate change. Chocolate, a niche luxury item, may not by itself be a huge factor, but both Mr Schreiber and Mr Wehrli believe it could be a start.

But, back in the laboratory, key questions remain. How much will this new chocolate cost? And, most important of all, without sugar, what does it really taste like?

The answer to the last question, in this chocolate-loving correspondent’s view, is: surprisingly good. A rich, dark but sweet flavour, with a hint of cocoa bitterness that would fit perfectly with an after dinner coffee.

The cost may remain something of a challenge, because of the global power of the sugar industry, and the generous subsidies it receives. “The cheapest ingredient in food will always be sugar as long as we subsidise it,” explains Kim Mishra. “For a… tonne of sugar, you pay $US500 [£394] or less.” Cocoa pulp and juice cost more, so the new chocolate would, for now, be more expensive.

Nevertheless, chocolate producers in countries where cocoa is grown, from Hawaii to Guatemala, to Ghana have contacted Mr Mishra for information about the new method.

In Switzerland, some of the bigger producers – including Lindt – are starting to use the cocoa fruit as well as the beans, but none, so far, has taken the step of eliminating sugar completely.

“We have to find daring chocolate producers who want to test the market and are willing to contribute to a more sustainable chocolate,” says Mr Mishra. “Then we can disrupt the system.”

Perhaps those daring producers will be found in Switzerland, whose chocolate industry makes 200,000 tonnes of chocolate each year, worth an estimated $US2bn. At Chocosuisse, Roger Wehrli sees a more sustainable, but still bright, future.

“I think chocolate will still taste fantastic in the future,” he insists. “And I think the demand will increase in the future due to the growing world population.”

And will they be eating Swiss chocolate? “Obviously,” he says.

The Israeli military says commandos have rescued from an underground tunnel in Gaza a Bedouin Arab hostage who was kidnapped by Hamas during the 7 October attack on Israel.

Kaid Farhan Elkadi, 52, was rescued in a “complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet domestic security service, according to a statement.

No further details could be published “due to considerations of the safety of our hostages, the security of our forces, and national security”, it said.

Mr Elkadi – the eighth hostage rescued by Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza – is in a stable condition in hospital, where he is undergoing examinations.

Photographs released by the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba showed him speaking to members of his family while sitting in a hospital armchair.

His brother, Hatam, told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that he was “a little thin”.

“We told him that everything is fine and that everyone is waiting for him outside,” he said.

“We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. We hope that all hostages will get this moment, that they will all experience the same excitement and joy,” he added. “May all the hostages return, and may all the families feel this feeling.”

Mr Elkadi, a father of 11 and grandfather of one, is from a Bedouin village in the Rahat area of the Negev desert.

He worked for many years as a security guard at Kibbutz Magen, close to the Israel-Gaza border, where he was abducted 10 months ago.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a video announcement that he could not go into many details about the operation in which he was freed.

But he added that he could “share that Israeli commandos rescued [him] from an underground tunnel, following accurate intelligence”.

Footage released by the IDF showed Mr Elkadi sitting down, smiling and speaking to soldiers, including the commander of the 162nd Division, moments after his rescue.

Haaretz reported that he managed to escape his captors before being rescued, and that the soldiers attempted to understand whether he had been held with other hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had congratulated Mr Elkadi in a telephone call and told him that all Israelis were moved by the news.

“We are working relentlessly to return all of our hostages,” the statement quoted Mr Netanyahu as saying.

“We are doing this in two main ways: negotiations and rescue operations. The two of these together require our military presence on the ground, and constant military pressure.”

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum described the rescue as “miraculous”.

But it stressed that “military operations alone cannot free the remaining hostages who have suffered 326 days of abuse and terror”, and that “a negotiated deal is the only way forward”.

“We urgently call on the international community to maintain pressure on Hamas to accept the proposed deal and release all hostages.”

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

More than 40,430 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 104 hostages still being held, including 34 who are presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Indirect talks have continued in Cairo in recent days, but so far there has been no sign of a breakthrough over key sticking points. They include Mr Netanyahu’s demand that Israel keep troops along Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Hamas has rejected.

Two other Bedouin Arabs – Yousef Zyadna and his son, Hamza – are among the remaining hostages who are still alive, while the body of a third, Mhamad el-Atrash, is still being held by Hamas.

Another Bedouin, Hisham al-Sayed, has been held captive in Gaza since 2015.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets bowing to what he calls pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” content on Facebook and Instagram during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a letter sent to a US House committee chair, he said some material – including humour and satire – was taken down in 2021 under pressure from senior officials.

The White House has defended its actions, saying it encouraged “responsible actions to protect public health and safety”.

Mr Zuckerberg also said his firm briefly “demoted” content relating to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, ahead of the 2020 election, after the FBI warned of “a potential Russian disinformation” operation.

It later became clear that this content was not part of such an operation, Mr Zuckerberg said, and it should not have been temporarily taken down.

Mr Zuckerberg did not give further detail about the actions he regretted during the pandemic. At that time, his business removed posts for a variety of reasons.

Mr Zuckerberg said the decisions made were the decisions of his business, but that the “government pressure was wrong”.

He continued: “We made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Mr Zuckerberg said he and Meta would be ready to “push back” if something similar happened in the future.

His letter was addressed to Jim Jordan, the chair of the House judiciary committee, which has been investigating content moderation on online platforms. Republicans said the letter was a “big win for free speech“.

In a statement issued to the website Politico, the White House stood by its actions.

It said: “Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.”

Mr Zuckerberg’s comments on Hunter Biden refer to the story of a laptop that was abandoned by the president’s son at a repair shop in Delaware – as first reported by the New York Post.

The newspaper claimed emails found on the computer suggested his business abroad had influenced US foreign policy while his father was vice-president.

The president and his family have denied any wrongdoing.

The story became a notable right-wing talking point in the US, and a point of contention as some social media platforms censored the content.

Mr Zuckerberg said the story was temporarily demoted on his platforms while going through a fact-check – after a warning from the FBI of a potential Russian disinformation operation, and “in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote.

“We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Mr Zuckerberg also said he did not plan to make any more contributions to supporting electoral infrastructure.

In 2020, he donated $400m (£302m) via his philanthropic Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which was intended to help government offices conduct the election during the pandemic.

However, misinformation spread rapidly on social media accusing Mr Zuckerberg of effectively using a loophole to skirt maximum donation limits in a bid to get Mr Biden elected.

Mr Zuckerberg said his donations “were designed to be non-partisan”.

“Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other.

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role on way or another – or to even appear to be playing a role – so I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”

A Russian murderer who was released from prison to fight in the war in Ukraine, only to then kill an elderly woman, has been released a second time to return to the front, according to relatives of the woman.

“Grandma’s killer has escaped punishment for his crime – again – and has gone to fight in the war,” Anna Pekareva, the granddaughter of Yulia Byuskikh, told the BBC.

In 2022, Ivan Rossomakhin was released from prison, where he was serving a 14-year prison sentence for murder, to join the Wagner mercenary group.

He was later allowed to return home to the district of Vyatskiye Polyany in Russia’s Kirov Region. There, he attacked and killed 85-year-old Yulia in her own house.

• Russian convicts released to fight with Wagner accused of crimes

The killing was one of several committed by criminals who had been released from prisons all over Russia to join the Wagner group.

In April this year, 29-year-old Rossomakhin was found guilty of Yulia’s rape and murder and sentenced to 22 years in a high-security prison, later increased to 23 years. The court noted that the killing “involved extreme brutality”.

But Anna says the prison governor has now notified the family that Rossomakhin was released on 19 August – just one week after the start of his sentence.

“My first reaction was terror. I read the forensic reports and I know what this person did to my grandmother. It’s monstrous that he has been released again,” says Anna, adding: “The fact that this is happening in the 21st Century… there are no words that can describe what’s happening!”

An official document seen by the BBC, signed by the prison governor, states that the inmate was released in connection with a specific Russian law that allows the military to recruit convicts to send to the frontline.

It’s the second time the convicted murderer has been let out of jail in order to fight in Ukraine.

Shortly after the start of the full-scale invasion, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group began recruiting convicts from prisons to fight in Ukraine. If inmates agreed to sign up, they would receive an official pardon from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Thousands of rapists, murderers and other criminals, including Ivan Rossomakhin, were released from incarceration and sent to the frontlines, where many were killed during brutal assaults on Ukrainian cities such as Bakhmut.

After Prigozhin’s failed mutiny last year, when thousands of Wagner mercenaries marched on Moscow, enlisting inmates from prisons was taken over by the Russian military. The practice was formalised in an official federal law in March this year, and recruitment now appears to be intensifying.

Under the law, convicted criminals who sign up to fight have their remaining sentences suspended for the duration of their military service. Some could even receive an official pardon if they win awards, for example for “bravery” on the battlefield.

The Russian Embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment on the practice of releasing dangerous criminals to fight in Ukraine.

Ukraine has also released some prisoners to fight at the front, though people convicted of murder or sexual offences are not eligible. Ukrainian Deputy Justice Minister Olena Vysotska told the AP news agency earlier this year that up to 3,000 prisoners have joined the military.

A grinding offensive by Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region this year has depleted Moscow’s reserves. The UK Ministry of Defence has estimated that during two months of the operation, Russia lost as many as 70,000 men – that’s an average casualty rate of around 1,000 per day.

Regular recruitment drives are being stepped up, too. In the last year, one-off payments for volunteering to fight have risen steeply. In some cases, men are offered as much as 1.5 million roubles (£12,360) to sign up.

The Kremlin’s willingness to release highly dangerous criminals like Rossomakhin and send them to war indicates that the Russian military desperately needs more recruits.

“It’s obvious there isn’t enough manpower,” Anna says.

“The authorities don’t give a damn about peaceful civilians if they allow people who have committed serious crimes to be exonerated and let out of prison. It tells us that no-one can feel safe in Russia.”

Anna says Rossomakhin’s release means her family are now in extreme danger: “If he comes back he’ll try and take revenge on us – for our efforts to ensure he got a life sentence.

She says she wants to leave the country, and other family members will go into hiding.

“It’s frightening that he’s not the only one. Even if he doesn’t return, how many more murderers and psychopaths are out there walking around?”

Australia will introduce a cap on the number of new international students it accepts, as it tries to reduce overall migration to pre-pandemic levels.

The nation has one of the biggest international student markets in the world, but the number of new enrolments will be limited to 270,000 for 2025.

Each higher education institution will be given an individual restriction, the government announced on Tuesday, with the biggest cuts to be borne by vocational education and training providers.

The change has angered the tertiary education industry, with some universities calling it “economic vandalism”, but Canberra says it will improve the quality and longevity of the sector.

Australia is host to about 717,500 international students, according to the latest government figures from early 2024.

Education Minister Jason Clare acknowledged that higher education was hard-hit during the pandemic, when Australia sent foreign students home and introduced strict border controls.

He also noted, however, that the number of international students at universities is now 10% higher than before Covid-19, while the number at private vocational and training providers is up 50%.

“Students are back but so are the shonks – people are seeking to exploit this industry to make a quick buck,” Mr Clare said.

The government has previously accused some providers of “unethical” behaviour – including accepting students who don’t have the language skills to succeed, offering a poor standard of education or training, and enrolling people who intend to work instead of study.

“These reforms are designed to make it better and fairer, and set it up on a more sustainable footing going forward,” Mr Clare said.

The restrictions will also help address Australia’s record migration levels, he said, which have added pressure to existing housing and infrastructure woes.

The government has already announced tougher minimum English-language requirements for international students and more scrutiny of those applying for a second study visa, while punishing hundreds of “dodgy” providers.

Enrolments at public universities will be pared back to 145,000 in 2025, which is around their 2023 levels, Mr Clare said.

Private universities and non-university higher education providers will be able to enrol 30,000 new international students, while vocational education and training institutions will be limited to 95,000.

The policy would also include incentives for universities to build more housing for international students, Mr Clare added.

But higher education providers say the industry is being made a “fall guy” for housing and migration issues, and that a cap would decimate the sector.

International education was worth A$36.4bn (£18.7bn, $24.7) to the Australian economy in 2022-23, making it the country’s fourth largest export that year.

According to economic modelling commissioned earlier this year by Sydney University – where foreign students make up about half of enrolments – the proposed cuts could cost the Australian economy $4.1bn and result in about 22,000 job losses in 2025.

Vicki Thomson, chief executive of a body which represents some of Australia’s most prestigious universities, described the proposed laws as “draconian” and “interventionist”, saying they amounted to “economic vandalism” in comments made earlier this year.

Mr Clare accepted that some service providers may have to make difficult budget decisions, but denied the cap would cripple the industry.

“To create the impression that this is somehow tearing down international education is absolutely and fundamentally wrong,” he said.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has received an official endorsement from Tulsi Gabbard – a former congresswoman who ran to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2020, before distancing herself from the party.

On Monday, Trump welcomed Ms Gabbard, 43, to a stage in Detroit, in the key swing state of Michigan.

Ms Gabbard quit the Democratic Party in 2022, complaining of its “wokeness”, and has since become a regular and outspoken guest on Fox News.

Meanwhile, more than 200 Republicans who served under previous presidents and party leaders have given their backing to Trump’s rival, Kamala Harris.

In an open letter, former staffers for George HW Bush and George W Bush, and Senators John McCain and Mitt Romney said another Trump administration would endanger American democracy.

Ms Gabbard appeared alongside Trump to commemorate US service personnel killed in an attack in Afghanistan three years prior, using it as an opportunity to criticise the Biden administration.

Thirteen US service members and more than 100 Afghans were killed during the suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

The incident occurred as American troops made a chaotic withdrawal from the country, and the Taliban returned to power.

Trump labelled it a “humiliation” that “set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world”.

He was joined earlier in the day by Ms Gabbard, a military veteran, at Virginia’s Arlington Cemetery to remember the American lives lost.

Ms Gabbard made frequent criticisms of US military interventionism during her career in Congress from 2013 to 2021.

Appearing at Monday’s event in Michigan, Ms Gabbard said she was appealing to Democrats, Republicans and independents alike to pick Trump at the ballot box in November – saying it was a matter of “saving our country and serving the people”.

Her official backing of Trump marks the culmination of a remarkable political journey over the last decade that began on the progressive left of the Democratic Party.

She was the first Hindu member of the US Congress, going on to serve as vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee – before resigning to endorse the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.

Ms Gabbard ran for president in 2020, championing liberal issues like government-run healthcare, free college tuition and gun control.

But Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee that year, and went on to win the presidency. Two years later, Ms Gabbard quit as a Democrat, saying the party had succumbed to “cowardly wokeness”.

By early 2024, she was singing the praises of Mr Biden’s rival, Trump, who will this time compete for the White House against Ms Harris.

She warned of a growing threat to American democracy – saying this danger was posed by the prosecution of Trump by America’s left-wing.

In the subsequent months, it was even speculated that Ms Gabbard could be in the frame as Trump’s potential running mate for November – a role that ultimately went to JD Vance.

Since her departure from the Democratic Party she has become a regular contributor to Fox News and has been accused of spreading “promoting Russian propaganda” by officials in Ukraine.

Ms Gabbard’s comments came days after Trump received the endorsement of another Democratic defector, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who last week suspended his independent campaign for the White House.

Top Democrats were quick to dismiss Ms Gabbard’s endorsement.

“Rather than focusing on earning the support of hardworking Americans, Trump is more fixated on winning the backing of extremists like Gabbard and RFK Jr — and they’ll do nothing but weigh down his sinking ship of a campaign,” the party’s Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd said in a statement.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• SWING STATES: Where might the election be won and lost?
• ANALYSIS: How Trump is trying to end the Harris honeymoon
• VOTERS: What they make of Tim Walz as Harris’s VP pick

In the Palestinian village of Battir, where ancient terraces are irrigated by a natural spring, life carries on as it has for centuries.

Part of a Unesco World Heritage site, Battir is known for its olive groves and vineyards. But now it is the latest flashpoint over settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has approved a new Jewish settlement here, taking away privately owned land for new settler houses and new outposts have been set up without even Israeli authorisation.

“They are stealing our land to build their dreams on our catastrophe,” says Ghassan Olyan, whose property is among that seized.

Unesco says it is concerned by the settlers’ plans around Battir, but the village is far from an isolated example. All settlements are seen as illegal under international law, although Israel disagrees.

“They are not caring about the international law, or local law, and even God’s law,” Mr Olyan says.

Last week, Israel’s domestic intelligence chief Ronen Bar wrote to ministers warning that Jewish extremists in the West Bank were carrying out acts of “terror” against Palestinians and causing “indescribable damage” to the country.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, there has been an acceleration in settlement growth in the occupied West Bank.

Extremists in Israel’s government boast that these changes will prevent an independent Palestinian state from ever being created.

There are fears, too, that they seek to prolong the war in Gaza to suit their goals.

Yonatan Mizrahi from Peace Now, an Israeli organisation that monitors settlement growth, says Jewish extremists in the West Bank are exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation, and making it harder than ever to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

He believes a “mix of rage and fear” in Israeli society after the 7 October attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed is driving settlers to seize more land, with fewer people questioning them.

A June survey by the Pew Research Center suggested that 40% of Israelis believed settlements made the country safer, up from 27% in 2013. Meanwhile, 35% of people polled said that the settlements hurt Israel’s security, down from 42%.

Mr Mizrahi worries that Jewish extremists in the West Bank are exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation, making it harder than ever to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. “I think it’s extremely dangerous,” he says. “It’s increasing the hate on both sides.”

Since the outbreak of the war, settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank has surged.

It had already been on the rise, but in the past 10 months the UN has documented around 1,270 attacks, compared with 856 in all of 2022.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, during the same period Israeli settler harassment has forced Palestinians out of at least 18 villages in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory between Israel and Jordan that was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and has been occupied ever since.

Between 7 October and August 2024, 589 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank – at least 570 by Israeli forces and at least 11 by settlers, according to the UN. They include some said to have been planning attacks as well as unarmed civilians. In the same period, Palestinians killed five settlers and nine members of Israel’s security forces.

This week, a Palestinian man aged 40 was reportedly shot dead after settlers and Israeli soldiers entered Wadi al-Rahhel, near Bethlehem. The Israeli military said stones had previously been thrown at an Israeli vehicle nearby.

Last month, a 22-year-old Palestinian man was killed when dozens of settlers rampaged through the village of Jit, prompting international condemnation. Israeli security forces have made four arrests and have described the incident as a “severe terror event”.

But the track record in such cases is one of virtual impunity. Israeli civil rights group Yesh Din found that, between 2005 and 2023, just 3% of official investigations into settler violence ended in a conviction.

In the letter by Ronen Bar, which was leaked to Israeli media, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service said that radical settlers were emboldened by light-handed law enforcement.

Settlers live in exclusively Jewish communities set up in parts of the West Bank.

Many settlements have the legal support of the Israeli government; others, known as outposts, and often as simple as caravans and corrugated iron sheds, are illegal even under Israeli law. But extremists build them regardless in a bid to seize more land.

In July, when the UN’s top court found for the first time that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was illegal, it said the country should halt all settlement activity and withdraw as soon as possible.

Israel’s Western allies have repeatedly described settlements as an obstacle to peace. Israel rejected the finding, saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”

Now there are fears that extremists are working to make settlements in the West Bank irreversible.

They have rapidly expanded their control over the territory, with the support of the most far-right government in Israel’s history. These extremists are advancing annexation plans in the West Bank and also openly call for settling Gaza once the war is over. Settlers now serve at the heart of Israel’s government, in key ministries.

At the very time that world leaders opposed to settlements are voicing renewed enthusiasm for a two-state solution – a long-hoped for peace plan that would create a separate Palestinian state – Israeli religious nationalists, who believe all these lands rightfully belong to Israel, are vowing to make the dream of an independent Palestinian state impossible.

Analysts think this is why some politicians are refusing to accept any ceasefire deal.

“The reason they don’t want to end the conflict or go into a hostage deal is because they believe that Israel should keep on fighting until it can reach a point where it can stay inside Gaza,” says Tal Schneider, political correspondent for The Times of Israel.

“They think for the long term their ideology is more righteous,” she adds. “This is their own logic.”

Israeli authorities, meanwhile, have announced plans for five new settlements, including the one in Battir, and declared a record area of land, at least 23 sq km, for the state. This means Israel considers it Israeli land, regardless of whether it is in the occupied Palestinian territories, or privately owned by Palestinians, or both, and Palestinians are prevented from using it.

By changing facts on the ground, as the settlers describe it, they hope to move enough Israelis on to the land and build enough on it to make their presence irreversible. Their long-term hope is that Israel formally annexes the land.

Outside state-sanctioned land seizures, extremists have also rapidly established settlement outposts.

In one by al-Qanoub, north of Hebron, satellite images showed new caravans and roads had appeared in the months since the start of the war. Meanwhile, an entire Palestinian community has been forced off the land.

We drove to al-Qanoub with Ibrahim Shalalda, 50, and his 80-year-old uncle Mohammed, who told us their homes had been destroyed by settlers last November.

As we approached, an extremist settler blocked the road with his car.

Armed Israelis soon arrived. The group – some Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, with insignia on their uniforms and one identified as a settlement security officer – stopped us for checks.

The settlement guard forced the two Palestinian farmers from the car and searched them. After two hours, the IDF soldiers dispersed the settlers and allowed the BBC car to leave.

Israel began settling the West Bank soon after capturing it from Jordan and occupying it more than five decades ago. Successive governments since then have allowed creeping settlement expansion.

Today, an estimated three million Palestinians live on the land – excluding Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem – alongside about half a million Jewish Israelis in more than 130 settlements.

But a prominent far-right government figure who took office in 2022 is promising to double the number of settlers to a million.

Bezalel Smotrich believes that Jews have a God-given right to these lands. He heads one of two far-right, pro-settler parties that veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought into his governing coalition after the 2022 elections returned him to power.

Mr Smotrich serves as finance minister but also has a post in the defence ministry, which has allowed him to make sweeping changes to Israeli policies in the West Bank.

He has massively invested state finances in settlements, including new roads and infrastructure. But he has also created a new bureaucracy, taking powers from the military, to fast-track settler construction.

In secretly recorded remarks to supporters, Mr Smotrich boasted that he was working towards “changing the DNA” of the system and for de facto annexation that would be “easier to swallow in the international and legal context”.

Religious nationalists have sat on the fringes of Israeli politics for decades.

But their ideology has slowly become more popular. In the 2022 election, these parties took 13 seats in the 120-seat Israeli parliament and became kingmakers in Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.

During the war, Bezalel Smotrich and fellow radical Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s national security minister, have repeatedly made comments stoking social division and provoking Israel’s Western allies.

After Israel’s military arrested reservists accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee, Mr Ben Gvir said it was “shameful” for Israel to arrest “our best heroes”. This month, Mr Smotrich suggested it might be “justified and moral” to starve Gazans.

But it is in the West Bank and Gaza that the far right seeks to make permanent changes. “This is a group of Israelis who have been against any type of compromise with the Palestinians or Israel’s other Arab neighbours,” says Anshel Pfeffer, a veteran Israeli journalist and correspondent for The Economist.

And with the war in Gaza, the far right sees a fresh opportunity. Mr Smotrich has called for Palestinian residents to leave, making way for Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.

Although Mr Netanyahu has ruled out restoring Jewish settlements in Gaza, he remains beholden to far-right parties who threaten to collapse his coalition if he signs a “reckless” ceasefire deal to bring home Israeli hostages currently held by Hamas.

The logic of the extremists may be one that only a minority of Israelis follow. But it is helping to prolong the war, and dramatically transforming the landscape of the West Bank – causing long-term damage to chances of peace.

Canada says it will impose a 100% tariff on imports of China-made electric vehicles (EV) after similar announcements by the US and European Union.

The country also plans to impose a 25% duty on Chinese steel and aluminium.

Canada and its Western allies accuse China of subsidising its EV industry, giving its car makers an unfair advantage.

China has called the move “trade protectionism” which “violates World Trade Organization rules”.

“We are transforming Canada’s automotive sector to be a global leader in building the vehicles of tomorrow, but actors like China have chosen to give themselves an unfair advantage in the global marketplace”, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canada’s duties on Chinese EVs are due to come into effect on 1 October, while those on steel and aluminium will be implemented from 15 October.

A Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson said Canada’s actions “seriously undermine the global economic system, and economic and trade rules”.

“China urges the Canadian side to immediately correct its erroneous practices,” they added.

China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, behind the US.

In May, the US said it would quadruple its tariffs on imports of Chinese EVs to 100%.

That was followed by the EU, which announced plans to impose duties on China-made EVs of up to 36.3%.

Canada’s tariffs on Chinese EVs will include those made by Tesla at its Shanghai factory.

“Tesla will almost certainly be lobbying the Canadian government to get some leeway on these tariffs, as they have already with Europe,” said Mark Rainford, a China-based car industry commentator.

“If they fail at mitigating the tariff enough, they’ll likely look at switching their Canadian imports to either the US or European factories since Canada is their 6th largest market this year and thus not insignificant.”

Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment from BBC News.

Earlier this month, the EU cut its planned extra tariff on China-made Teslas by more than half, after further investigations requested by Elon Musk’s car maker.

Chinese car brands are still not a common sight in Canada but some, like BYD, have taken steps to enter the country’s market.

China is the world’s largest manufacturer of EVs and its car makers have quickly gained a significant share of the global market.

Meanwhile, Canada has struck deals worth billions of dollars with major European car makers, as it tries to become a key part of the global EV industry.

Mariah Carey’s mother Patricia and sister Alison died on the same day over the weekend, the US singer has said in a statement.

“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend,” Carey said on Monday. “Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day.”

The Grammy-winning singer said she felt blessed to have spent time with her mother in the week before her death and asked for privacy.

She gave no further details about either woman’s cause of death.

Patricia, 87, was a former opera singer and vocal coach of Irish-American descent.

In Carey’s 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer detailed her complicated relationship with her mother, saying it had caused her “so much pain and confusion”.

Carey, 55, said competition had come between them. Professional jealousy “comes with the territory of success, but when the person is your mother and the jealousy is revealed at such a tender age, it’s particularly painful”, she added.

But she also spoke of the deep love she had had for her mother, writing in the dedication: “To Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could. I will love you the best I can, always.”

In an interview with Gayle King in 2022, the singer said she had “definitely” been affected by criticism from her mother when she was growing up.

She added that she had always credited her mother with exposing her to music.

Carey’s sister Alison, 63, had been receiving hospice care before her death, according to a friend quoted by the Times Union, a newspaper in New York State. The friend did not provide a cause of death.

The two sisters also had a complex relationship.

In her memoir, Carey wrote of being estranged from Alison, as well as her brother Morgan, saying it was “emotionally and physically safer for me to not have any contact”.

Alison sued Carey for $1.2m (£909,780) following the release of the memoir for “immense emotional distress”, calling it “vindictive”.

The singer’s father, Alfred, died in 2002 of cancer at the age of 72.

Carey is regarded as one of the most successful singers globally.

Her holiday single All I Want For Christmas Is You is the best-selling Christmas song by a female artist of all time.

She holds the record for the most Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles by a solo artist at 19 songs, has sold over 220 million records worldwide, and served as a judge on the competition show American Idol.

Jake Sullivan has been welcomed to China on his first visit as US national security adviser. He will hold talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi as the two countries try to stabilise relations.

Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang have met four times over 16 months in Vienna, Malta, Washington and Bangkok. Their last meeting in January was shortly after a high-stakes summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden that sought to reset frosty ties.

This week’s talks – scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday – signal that China is still a priority for the Biden administration, even as the retiring president enters his final months in office.

Both Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang have already acknowledged a need to find common ground after disagreements between their nations.

Could another presidential summit be on the cards?

The White House is trying not to explicitly link Mr Sullivan’s trip to the US presidential election. But it’s hard to ignore the timing.

If Mr Sullivan is able to lay the groundwork for a final Biden-Xi summit, his trip would tie up the ends of the US president’s most consequential – and fraught – foreign policy relationship.

US and Chinese diplomats always acknowledge that talks between Washington and Beijing are never easy. And there is a lot to talk about.

With the unexpected turn the US election has taken with Biden bowing out in favour of Kamala Harris, China is watching closely for what the next presidency might have in store.

Donald Trump has made it clear he will raise tariffs further on Chinese goods, potentially deepening the trade war he kicked off in 2019.

While Mr Biden’s administration saw merit in diplomacy, he didn’t reverse Trump-era tariffs and has added more – in May he announced steep duties on Chinese-made electric cars, solar panels, and steel.

Mr Biden has also strengthened alliances across Asia to combat China’s rising influence and beefed up Washington’s military presence – which, in turn, has rattled Beijing.

So far, the Harris campaign has not given many clues about how she plans to manage the relationship with China.

And the White House has made clear that Mr Sullivan’s visit is meant to continue the work of the Biden administration, rather than set the tone for the next president.

But China is likely looking ahead anyway.

Beijing will use this opportunity with Mr Sullivan to clarify its own priorities. It will hope that all parties in America are listening – China’s ministry of foreign affairs has described this as a “critical juncture” between the world’s two biggest economies.

For China, the red line is and always will be Taiwan. It claims the self-governing island and has repeatedly said it will not tolerate any signs that Washington is encouraging Taiwanese independence.

High-profile diplomatic visits, such as a controversial one by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022, or recognition of Taiwan’s elections or its elected leaders, fall into that category.

Chinese state media has said Beijing will focus on expressing grave concerns, stating its position, and making serious demands on matters such as the “Taiwan question”.

China will also have some strong words for Mr Sullivan on trade. Beijing has described US tariffs on Chinese goods as “unreasonable” and has urged Washington to “stop politicising and securitising economic and trade issues” and “take more measures to facilitate people-to-people exchanges between the two countries”.

When he came to power, Mr Biden wanted to set ties with China on an even keel after what he saw as the chaos and unpredictability of the Trump White House.

His administration has wanted to “responsibly manage” rivalry with Beijing; to demonstrate American power and competition with China through stealth not bravado.

But that strategy has been upended amid the turbulence of events.

Last year, crisis engulfed the direct relationship when an American fighter jet shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over US territory.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have further sharpened the tone.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing in April with a warning – Washington would act if China did not stop supplying Russia with microchips and machine parts to build weapons used in its war in Ukraine.

He accused his Chinese counterparts of “helping to fuel the biggest threat” to European security since the Cold War.

His warning materialised with a raft of sanctions on Chinese firms over their alleged support of the Russian military.

This is a tricky subject that China keeps trying to bat away, but Washington is insistent, and Mr Sullivan is likely to bring it up again.

China’s increasing assertiveness in Asia has also made the US wary of the impact of those ties further afield – particularly with Iran, which allies itself with Moscow and also arms Israel’s adversaries.

Finally, in America, there is the devastating domestic impact of Chinese-manufactured “pre-cursor” chemicals to make synthetic opioids like fentanyl, overdoses of which are killing more Americans than ever and the crisis has laid waste to entire towns.

Last year’s summit between Mr Biden and Mr Xi in San Fransisco was meant to make progress on these issues.

Since then, despite the tariffs and the stern rhetoric, Washington and Beijing have acknowledged their differences – and reports of the two sides striking a deal on curbing fentanyl production are a good sign.

In April, when the BBC accompanied US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his visit to Shanghai and Beijing, the public elements of some of his meetings with senior Chinese officials felt like a steely stand-off.

It was a show of diplomatic strength meant for each side’s domestic audience. And this will undoubtedly be a part of Mr Sullivan’s trip too, as he tries to bolster Mr Biden’s diplomacy in the waning months of his presidency.

But these meetings serve another fundamental purpose – face-to-face time between two rival, inter-dependent economies as they battle mutual distrust and try to probe each other’s real intentions.

It seems that Jake Sullivan’s previous meetings with Wang Yi have quietly laid the groundwork for what both sides call “stable relations”.

In a recent speech at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, Mr Sullivan said that he and Mr Wang had “increasingly gotten to the point of setting aside the talking points and really having strategic conversations”.

He described the character of those conversations as “direct”, including one on the war in Ukraine.

“Both of us left feeling that we didn’t agree or see eye-to-eye on everything but that there was a lot of work to carry forward.”

Imagine picking up a nice juicy apple – but instead of biting into it you keep the seeds and throw the rest away.

That’s what chocolate producers have traditionally done with the cocoa fruit – used the beans and disposed of the rest.

But now food scientists in Switzerland have come up with a way to make chocolate using the entire cocoa fruit rather than just the beans – and without using sugar.

The chocolate, developed at Zurich’s prestigious Federal Institute of Technology by scientist Kim Mishra and his team includes the cocoa fruit pulp, the juice, and the husk, or endocarp.

The process has already attracted the attention of sustainable food companies.

They say traditional chocolate production, using only the beans, involves leaving the rest of the cocoa fruit – the size of a pumpkin and full of nutritious value – to rot in the fields.

The key to the new chocolate lies in its very sweet juice, which tastes, Mr Mishra explains, “very fruity, a bit like pineapple”.

This juice, which is 14% sugar, is distilled down to form a highly concentrated syrup, combined with the pulp and then, taking sustainability to new levels, mixed with the dried husk, or endocarp, to form a very sweet cocoa gel.

The gel, when added to the cocoa beans to make chocolate, eliminates the need for sugar.

Mr Mishra sees his invention as the latest in a long line of innovations by Swiss chocolate producers.

In the 19th Century, Rudolf Lindt, of the famous Lindt chocolate family, accidentally invented the crucial step of “conching” the chocolate – rolling the warm cocoa mass to make it smooth and reduce its acidity – by leaving a cocoa mass mixer running overnight. The result in the morning? Deliciously smooth, sweet chocolate.

“You need to be innovative to maintain your product category,” says Mr Mishra. “Or… you will just make average chocolate.”

Mr Mishra was partnered in his project by KOA, a Swiss start-up working in sustainable cocoa growing. Its co-founder, Anian Schreiber, believes using the entire cocoa fruit could solve many of the cocoa industry’s problems, from the soaring price of cocoa beans to endemic poverty among cocoa farmers.

“‘Instead of fighting over who gets how much of the cake, you make the cake bigger and make everybody benefit,” he explains.

“The farmers get significantly extra income through utilising cocoa pulp, but also the important industrial processing is happening in the country of origin. Creating jobs, creating value that can be distributed in the country of origin.”

Mr Schreiber describes the traditional system of chocolate production, in which farmers in Africa or South America sell their cocoa beans to big chocolate producers based in wealthy countries as “unsustainable”.

The model is also questioned by a new exhibition in Geneva, which explores Switzerland’s colonial past.

To those who point out that Switzerland never had any colonies of its own, chocolate historian Letizia Pinoja counters that Swiss mercenary soldiers policed other countries’ colonies, and Swiss ship owners transported slaves.

Geneva in particular, she says, has a particular link to some of the most exploitative phases of the chocolate industry.

“Geneva is a hub for commodity trade, and since the 18th Century, cocoa was reaching Geneva and then the rest of Switzerland to produce chocolate.

“Without this commodity trade of colonial goods, Switzerland could never have become the land of chocolate. And cocoa is no different from any other kind of colonial good. They all came from slavery.”

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Nowadays, the chocolate industry is much more highly regulated. Producers are supposed to monitor their entire supply chain to make sure there is no child labour. And, from next year, all chocolate imported to the European Union must guarantee that no deforestation took place to grow the cocoa used in it.

But does that mean all the problems are solved? Roger Wehrli, director of the association of Swiss chocolate manufacturers, Chocosuisse, says cases of child labour and deforestation remain, particularly in Africa. He fears that some producers, in a bid to avoid the challenges, are simply shifting their production to South America.

“Does this solve the problem in Africa? No. I guess it would be better for responsible firms to stay in Africa and help to improve the situation.”

That is why Mr Wehrli sees the new chocolate developed in Zurich as “very promising… If you use the whole cocoa fruit, you can get better prices. So it’s economically interesting for the farmers. And it’s interesting from an ecological point of view.”

The link between chocolate production and the environment is also stressed by Anian Schreiber. A third of all farm produce, he says, “never ends up in our mouths”.

Those statistics are even worse for cocoa, if the fruit is abandoned to use only the beans. “It’s like you throw away the apple and just use its seeds. That’s what we do right now with the cocoa fruit.”

Food production involves significant greenhouse gas emissions, so reducing food waste could also help to tackle climate change. Chocolate, a niche luxury item, may not by itself be a huge factor, but both Mr Schreiber and Mr Wehrli believe it could be a start.

But, back in the laboratory, key questions remain. How much will this new chocolate cost? And, most important of all, without sugar, what does it really taste like?

The answer to the last question, in this chocolate-loving correspondent’s view, is: surprisingly good. A rich, dark but sweet flavour, with a hint of cocoa bitterness that would fit perfectly with an after dinner coffee.

The cost may remain something of a challenge, because of the global power of the sugar industry, and the generous subsidies it receives. “The cheapest ingredient in food will always be sugar as long as we subsidise it,” explains Kim Mishra. “For a… tonne of sugar, you pay $US500 [£394] or less.” Cocoa pulp and juice cost more, so the new chocolate would, for now, be more expensive.

Nevertheless, chocolate producers in countries where cocoa is grown, from Hawaii to Guatemala, to Ghana have contacted Mr Mishra for information about the new method.

In Switzerland, some of the bigger producers – including Lindt – are starting to use the cocoa fruit as well as the beans, but none, so far, has taken the step of eliminating sugar completely.

“We have to find daring chocolate producers who want to test the market and are willing to contribute to a more sustainable chocolate,” says Mr Mishra. “Then we can disrupt the system.”

Perhaps those daring producers will be found in Switzerland, whose chocolate industry makes 200,000 tonnes of chocolate each year, worth an estimated $US2bn. At Chocosuisse, Roger Wehrli sees a more sustainable, but still bright, future.

“I think chocolate will still taste fantastic in the future,” he insists. “And I think the demand will increase in the future due to the growing world population.”

And will they be eating Swiss chocolate? “Obviously,” he says.