Drive three hours north of Perth, and you’ll arrive in Eneabba – barren and desolate, just the odd hill in the distance.

This is Western Australia mining territory. Buried in this vast terrain is a massive pit, full of what looks like mounds of worthless dirt.

But appearances can be deceiving: this pit is home to a million-tonne stockpile containing critical minerals, better known as rare earths, which are crucial for making electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence equipment.

And Australia is betting big on this discovery with a billion dollar loan to a mining company to extract these metals – and disrupt a supply chain that China has monopolised.

Will the gamble pay off?

China’s chokehold on rare earths has hit home with US President Donald Trump’s trade wars. When Beijing restricted exports, a powerful bargaining chip in tariff negotiations, it sent manufacturers around the world into their war rooms. China, they realised with alarm, had the power to stop their factories.

Ford even halted production of its popular Explorer SUV for a week at one of its Chicago plants – a bold move while grappling with Trump’s tariffs.

A month later, CEO Jim Farley revealed the pause was triggered by a shortage of rare earths, admitting the company was still struggling to secure reliable supply. “It’s day to day,” Mr Farley told Bloomberg TV.

Beijing has since agreed to let rare earth minerals and magnets flow to the United States, which eased the bottleneck.

But without a US-China trade deal, the fear is that the disruption could return.

“The West dropped the ball – that’s the reality. And China was in for the long run. It saw the benefit and was willing to invest in it,” says Jacques Eksteen, chair for extractive metallurgy at Curtin University.

The phrase “rare earths” – referring to 17 elements on the periodic table which are lightweight, super strong and resistant to heat, making them useful in small electric motors – is something of a misnomer.

“Rare earths are not rare or scarce. Gold is scarce, but it’s not a critical material,” Professor Eksteen explains.

Rare earths are critical, however. Take the average electric vehicle – there might be rare earths-based motors in dozens of components from side mirrors and speakers to windshield wipers and breaking sensors.

The problem is therefore not amount, but the fact “somewhere in the supply chain you’ve got one or maybe a few countries controlling that bottleneck”, Professor Eksteen adds.

In the 90s, Europe and France in particular had a prominent rare earths industry. Today, almost all these minerals come from China, which has spent decades mining and refining at scale.

China now accounts for more than half of global rare earth mining, and almost 90% of processing.

The US sources 80% of its rare earth imports from China, while the European Union relies on China for about 98% of its supply.

“China has since very deliberately and overtly sought to control the market for the purposes of supporting their downstream manufacturing and defence industries,” says Dan McGrath, head of rare earths for Iluka Resources, in between driving us around the company’s vast Eneabba site.

But Mr McGrath, and Iluka, are hoping to make a dent in that control – even if it wasn’t necessarily in the company’s original plan.

For decades, Iluka has been mining zircon in Australia – a key ingredient in ceramics, and titanium dioxide used in the pigmentation of paint, plastics and paper.

It just so happens the byproducts of these mineral sands include dysprosium and terbium – some of the most sought-after rare earths.

Over the years, Iluka has built up the stockpile, and is now worth more than $650m (£440m).

This was the easy part, however. The processing or refining is another matter altogether.

“They’re chemically very similar so to try and separate them requires a huge number of stages,” Professor Eksteen explained.

“Also, you’ve got residues and wastes that you have to deal with out of this industry, and that’s problematic. They often produce radioactive materials. It comes at a cost.”

And that is one of the reasons the Australian government is loaning Iluka A$1.65bn ($1bn; £798m) to build a refinery to meet demand for rare earths which Iluka sees growing by 50-170% by the end of the decade.

“We expect to be able to supply a significant proportion of Western demand for rare earths by 2030. Our customers recognise that having an independent, secure and sustainable supply chain outside of China is fundamental for the continuity of their business,” says Mr McGrath.

“This refinery and Iluka’s commitment to the rare earth business is an alternative to China.”

But the refinery will take another two years to build and come online.

“Without the strategic partnership we have with the Australian government, a rare earths project would not be economically viable,” Mr McGrath says.

China’s recent willingness to turn supply of rare earths on and off has spurred trading partners to diversify their suppliers.

Iluka says because automakers for example plan their production years in advance, it is already fielding requests for when its refinery does come online.

Rare earths are critical to the green transition, electric vehicles, and defence technologies – making their control a pressing national priority.

“The open international market in critical minerals and rare earths is a mirage. It doesn’t exist. And the reason it doesn’t exist is because there is one supplier of these materials and they have the wherewithal to change where the market goes, whether that be in pricing or supply,” Australia’s resources minister Madeleine King says.

Canberra sees government intervention as necessary to provide an alternative supply, and help the world rely less on China.

“We can either sit back and do nothing about that… or we can step up to take on the responsibility to develop a rare earths industry here that competes with that market,” Ms King adds.

But there is something that Australia will have to contend with as it invests and works to expand a rare earths industry – pollution.

In China, environmental damage from years of processing rare earths has led to chemicals and radioactive waste seeping into waterways – cities and people bearing the scars of decades of poor regulation.

With rare earths, it’s not so much about the mining footprint, rather the processing that is a dirty business – because it involves extraction, leaching, thermal cracking and refining which produce radioactive components.

“I think there is no metal industry that is completely clean… unfortunately, it’s a matter of picking your poison sometimes,” Professor Eksteen says.

“In Australia, we’ve got mechanisms to handle that. We’ve got a legal environment and a framework to work with that to at least deal with it responsibly.”

The EU has in the past accused China of using a “quasi monopoly” on rare earths as a bargaining chip, weaponising it to undermine competitors in key industries.

The bloc – which is home to hundreds of auto manufacturers that so desperately need rare earths – said even if China has loosened restrictions on supplies, the threat of supply chain shocks remains.

Even if building a brand new industry will take time, Australia seems to have a lot going for it in the rare earths race, as it tries to be a more reliable and cleaner source.

And one that – crucially – is independent of China.

US National Guard troops have begun appearing on the streets of Washington DC, a day after President Donald Trump deployed the troops to the city and took control of its police force as he argued violent crime was out of control.

Armoured vehicles were spotted at urban centres and tourist sites around the US capital on Tuesday evening.

Officials have said that 800 National Guard troops are expected to be deployed, as well as 500 federal law enforcement agents.

Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, who has denied crime is out of control in her city, described the troop deployment as an “authoritarian push”.

Trump, a Republican, has also threatened similar deployments against New York and Chicago, two other Democratic-controlled cities.

The camouflaged troops have been trickling into the US capital since Trump’s announcement on Monday.

They have been seen erecting barricades outside several government buildings, and taking photos with tourists.

Twenty-three people were arrested by federal agents on Monday night, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. The agents are aiding local law enforcement.

She said the arrests were for homicide, gun offences, drug dealing, lewd acts, stalking, reckless driving, and other crimes.

“This is only the beginning,” said Leavitt.

“Over the course of the next month, the Trump administration will relentlessly pursue and arrest every violent criminal in the District who breaks the law, undermines public safety, and endangers law-abiding Americans.”

FBI Director Kash Patel later said FBI agents were involved in around half of those arrests.

Both the mayor of Washington and the city’s police chief said earlier in the day they shared the same goal as the federal agents.

“What I’m focused on is the federal surge and how to make the most of the federal officers that we have,” Bowser said after a meeting on Tuesday with US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith said: “We know that we have to get illegal guns off of our streets, and if we have this influx of enhanced presence, we know that it’s going to make our city even better.”

But at a town hall on Tuesday night, the mayor sharpened her criticism of Trump.

Bowser called on community members to “protect our city, to protect our autonomy, to protect our home rule and get to the other side of this guy and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push”, according to the New York Times.

It comes as a manhunt was launched for an armed assailant who killed a man on Monday night in Logan Circle, one of Washington DC’s trendiest neighbourhoods, just a mile from the White House.

It was the 100th homicide recorded in Washington DC this year, according to local media.

Police say the suspect was last seen wearing a black shirt and carrying a rifle.

The shooting prompted US Secret Service to bolster security outside the president’s home as a precaution.

According to crime figures published by Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police, violent offences peaked in 2023 and fell 35% last year to their lowest level in three decades.

But DC Police Union chairman Gregg Pemberton has disputed those figures, previously accusing the city police department of “deliberately falsifying crime data, creating a false narrative of reduced crime while communities suffer”.

FBI data has also indicated a drop in crime in Washington DC last year – a more modest decrease of 9%.

Studies suggest the capital’s homicide rate is higher than average compared with other major US cities.

A South Korean former tech executive accused of helping to spark a cryptocurrency crisis that cost investors more than $40bn (£31.8bn) has pleaded guilty to two criminal counts of fraud.

Do Kwon was the boss of Singapore-based Terraform Labs, which operated two cryptocurrencies – TerraUSD and Luna – both of which collapsed in 2022, triggering a wider sell-off in the crypto market.

The US says he was responsible for the failure of the two digital currencies, accusing him of “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud”.

As part of the plea deal, prosecutors have agreed to refrain from seeking a sentence longer than 12 years. Kwon is due to be sentenced on 11 December.

Kwon’s guilty plea “underscores the importance of accountability in the digital asset sector,” said Todd Snyder, who was appointed by US authorities and Terraform Labs to oversee the company’s liquidation.

He added that those who contributed to the collapse of Terraform Labs will be held to account by the firm and that assets will be recovered in the best interests of claimants.

Kwon’s guilty plea in a New York court comes after a lengthy legal battle.

He initially fled South Korea after a warrant for his arrest was issued in 2023, eventually ending up in Montenegro where he was arrested and jailed before being extradited to the US.

US prosecutors said Kwon misrepresented features that were supposed to keep the so-called stablecoin at $1 without outside intervention.

They alleged that in 2021, Kwon arranged for a trading firm to surreptitiously purchase millions of dollars worth of the token to restore TerraUSD’s value, even as he told investors that a computer algorithm called Terra Protocol was responsible.

Prosecutors say the alleged misrepresentation prompted a wide array of investors to buy Terraform’s offerings, which helped prop up the value of the company’s Luna token, which was closely linked to TerraUSD.

The following year, Kwon’s TerraUSD and the Luna cryptocurrency crashed.

“In 2021, I made false and misleading statements about why [TerraUSD] regained its peg,” he said in court on Tuesday.

“What I did was wrong and I want to apologise for my conduct,” he added.

Kwon had originally pleaded not guilty to nine counts stemming from the crash, including securities and wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy.

He had faced up to 135 years in prison if convicted of the charges in the original indictment.

As part of his plea deal, Kwon agreed to refrain from challenging the allegations in the indictment.

He must also forfeit up to $19.3m plus interest and several properties and pay restitution.

While prosecutors have agreed to limit their requested sentence to 12 years, Judge Paul Engelmayer maintained that he was entitled to prescribe a longer sentence.

That sentence could be up to 25 years in prison.

He still faces charges in South Korea, according to his attorney.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine would reject any Russian proposal to give up the Donbas region in exchange for a ceasefire, warning it could be used as a springboard for future attacks.

Zelensky was speaking ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

Trump has said any peace deal would involve “some swapping of territories” and it is believed one of Putin’s demands is that Kyiv surrenders the parts of the Donbas it still controls.

Meanwhile Russia’s troops have continued their summer offensive, making a sudden thrust near the eastern town of Dobropillia and advancing 10km (six miles) in a short period of time.

Zelensky admitted the advance had taken place in “several spots” but said Kyiv would soon destroy the units involved in the attack.

While downplaying Russia’s advance, he added it was “clear to us” that Moscow’s objective was to create a “certain information space” before Putin meets Trump that “Russia is moving forward, advancing, while Ukraine is losing”.

No official details have emerged on what demands Vladimir Putin could make when he meets Donald Trump in Anchorage on Friday.

The Donbas – made up of the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk – has been partly occupied by Russia since 2014.

Moscow now holds almost all of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk but speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Zelensky reaffirmed that Ukraine would reject any proposal to leave the Donbas.

• Ukraine’s borders must not be changed by force, EU leaders say
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• Why did Putin’s Russia invade Ukraine?

“If we withdraw from the Donbas today – our fortifications, our terrain, the heights we control – we will clearly open a bridgehead for the Russians to prepare an offensive,” he said.

Zelensky has previously insisted that Ukrainians would not “gift their land to the occupier”, and pointed to the country’s constitution, which requires a referendum before a change in its territory.

In his nightly address on Tuesday, Zelensky also said Moscow was preparing new offensives on three parts of the front – Zaporizhzhia, Pokrovsk and Novopavlov areas.

Last week Trump said there would be “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Russia and Ukraine – sparking concern in Kyiv and across Europe that Moscow could be allowed to redraw Ukraine’s borders by force.

Russia currently controls just under 20% of Ukrainian territory.

The White House on Tuesday said the Alaska talks would be a “listening exercise” for Trump and added having him and Putin sit down in the same room would give the US president “the best indication on how to end this war”.

It follows Trump describing the summit as a “feel-out meeting” on Monday, seeming to tone down expectations that Friday’s meeting could bring Ukraine and Russia closer to peace.

When he announced the summit last week, Trump sounded positive that the meeting could result in concrete steps towards peace.

“I think my gut instinct really tells me that we have a shot at it,” he said.

But Ukrainian President Zelensky once again expressed serious doubts that the talks could result in a positive outcome for Kyiv, which has been excluded from the summit. “I don’t know what they will talk about without us,” he said.

Zelensky has steered clear of criticising Trump but in recent days his frustration at being sidelined has become apparent, and on Tuesday he said the choice of Alaska as a location was a “personal victory” for Putin.

“He is coming out of isolation, because they are meeting with him on US territory,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader has previously said any agreements without Kyiv’s involvement would amount to “dead decisions”.

On Wednesday, Zelensky is due to join a virtual meeting with Donald Trump, EU leaders, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Nato chief Mark Rutte.

All sides will try to convince Trump of the need not to be swayed by Putin when the two meet at the hastily organised summit.

The wife of South Korea’s jailed former president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has been arrested over a raft of charges, including stock manipulation and bribery.

Former first lady Kim Keon Hee denied all charges during a four-hour court hearing in Seoul on Tuesday. But the court issued a detention warrant, citing the risk that she may destroy evidence.

South Korea has a history of former presidents being indicted and imprisoned. However, this is the first time both the former president and former first lady have been jailed.

Yoon was detained in January to face trial over a failed martial law bid last year that plunged the country into chaos and eventually led to his ouster.

Prosecutors say Kim, 52, made over 800 million won ($577,940; £428,000) by participating in a price-rigging scheme involving the stocks of Deutsch Motors, a BMW dealer in South Korea.

While this allegedly happened before her husband was elected the country’s leader, it continued to cast a shadow throughout his presidency.

She allegedly also accepted two Chanel bags and a diamond necklace as bribes from the controversial Unification Church in exchange for business favours.

Among other charges, Kim is also accused of meddling in candidate nominations during the parliamentary by-elections in 2022 and the general elections last year.

Kim appeared solemn as she attended Tuesday’s hearing wearing a black suit and a black skirt.

“I sincerely apologise for causing trouble despite being a person of no importance,” she told reporters.

While he was president, Yoon vetoed three opposition-led bills that sought a special counsel investigation into allegations against Kim.

He issued the last veto in November, a week before he declared martial law.

A special counsel was set up in June this year after Yoon’s rival Lee Jae Myung became president.

A standout feature of the India-UK free trade agreement signed last month was the Narendra Modi government’s decision to open India’s vast government procurement market to UK suppliers.

This typically includes a range of things the government buys – from goods and services to contracts for public works such as roads.

Some 40,000 high-value tenders worth £38bn from federal ministries will now be open to bidding for UK businesses in strategic sectors like transport, green energy and infrastructure – areas which have thus far been heavily protected from foreign competition.

The access is unprecedented, trade experts say.

It is “far greater” than what India had offered in its earlier agreement with the United Arab Emirates and “sets a new benchmark”, Ajay Srivastava of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think-tank, told the BBC.

Under the agreement, UK firms bidding for Indian government contracts in specified areas will be treated almost on par with Indian suppliers and also have real-time access to information on forthcoming public tenders and procurement opportunities.

Also, goods from the UK made with just 20% domestic input can now be supplied to the Indian government, allowing UK companies the flexibility to source up to 80% of the parts or raw material from other countries and still qualify for procurement preference in India.

The minimum contract value at which these firms can bid for government projects has also been sharply reduced as a result of which “UK companies can now bid on a wide range of lower-value projects – such as rural roads, solar equipment for schools, or IT systems for government offices – that were previously out of reach”, said Mr Srivastava.

But for British companies, realising this opportunity on the ground will be easier said than done, several experts told the BBC.

While UK suppliers are eligible to participate as Class-II local suppliers, Indian companies will continue to get preferential treatment as Class-I suppliers, says Dr Arpita Mukherjee, a trade expert with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

Moreover, pricing plays a key role in winning contracts, and “UK companies tend to have higher prices” compared with Indian companies, which will be a major challenge for them, she adds.

A more significant deterrent will be delayed payments and difficult contract enforcement, which are “major legacy issues when it comes to public procurement in India”, says Srijan Shukla of the Observer Research Foundation think-tank.

He says a study on procurement by India’s central public sector enterprises from 2017 to 2020 found that pending payments to suppliers were often more than the total average procurement in a year.

“This will impact UK players trying to enter India’s public procurement markets, especially when it comes to public contracts that have long-time horizons and are subject to regulatory and political uncertainties,” Mr Shukla told the BBC.

Pending dues have been a major irritant for India’s small businesses too, leading to short-term liquidity issues that often “force them out of these procurement markets and reallocate that business to the big players”, according to Mr Shukla.

Much of this is reflected in India’s poor ranking – 163 out of 190 – on contract enforcement in the World Bank’s Doing Business report, the latest round of which was in 2020.

While things have improved since these rankings were published – with one-stop-shop portals like Government e-Marketplace, the Central Public Procurement Portal or the recently launched online dispute resolution portal bringing more transparency to the public tendering process – payment discipline by government entities continues to remain a challenge, says Mr Shukla.

According to Ms Mukherjee, the India-UK trade agreement emphasises transparency in procurement but omits issues like pending dues, contract enforcement and penalties.

She adds the deal excludes the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement’s dispute settlement provisions for four years after the CETA takes effect – these provisions usually define how disputes are resolved.

“Doing business in India is an acquired skill. Over time, companies from the UK will have to learn the way to work around complexities regarding the art of winning public tenders and navigating though complex regulations,” Mr Shukla says.

Despite the niggling issues, allowing foreign players entry into India’s government procurement market marks a far-reaching policy shift.

It shows the Indian government’s intentions to open up a space that has long been reserved for local small and medium enterprises, and could be reflective of the concessions Delhi is willing to give foreign players in future trade agreements like the one being negotiated with the US, according to GTRI.

India is late to including deep government procurement clauses in trade deals, making its current efforts a catch-up game, says Mr Shukla.

It is also a sign, he says, of the Indian government’s “confidence that its own firms can compete with global firms both externally and at home”.

The hope is that more foreign players will force more accountability from the Indian government and “help standardise” its tendering and public procurement process – marked by payment delays and poor contract enforcement – to global standards.

Gaza City has come under intense air attack, the territory’s Hamas-run civil defence agency has said, as Israeli forces prepare to occupy the city.

Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman, said the residential areas of Zeitoun and Sabra had for three days been hit by bombs and drone strikes that “cause massive destruction to civilian homes”, with residents unable to recover the dead and injured.

Meanwhile the UK, EU, Australia, Canada and Japan issued a statement saying “famine is unfolding in front of our eyes” and urged action to “reverse starvation”.

They demanded “immediate, permanent and concrete steps” to facilitate the entry of aid to Gaza. Israel denies there is starvation in Gaza.

It has accused UN agencies of not picking up aid at the borders and delivering it.

The joint statement also demanded an end to the use of lethal force near aid distribution sites and lorry convoys, where the UN says more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed, mostly by the Israeli military.

Separately, the World Health Organisation on Tuesday appealed to Israel to let it stock medical supplies to deal with a “catastrophic” health situation before it seizes control of Gaza City.

“We all hear about ‘more humanitarian supplies are allowed in’ – well it’s not happening yet, or it’s happening at a way too low a pace,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the agency’s representative in the Palestinian territories.

“We want to as quickly stock up hospitals,” he added. “We currently cannot do that. We need to be able to get all essential medicines and medical supplies in.”

Israel’s war cabinet voted on Monday to occupy Gaza City, a move condemned at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council later that day. On Tuesday the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was “at the beginning of a new state of combat”.

The Israeli government has not provided an exact timetable on when its forces would enter the area. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s forces had been instructed to dismantle the “two remaining Hamas strongholds” in Gaza City and a central area around al-Mawasi.

He also outlined a three-step plan to increase aid in Gaza, including designating safe corridors for aid distribution, as well as more air drops by Israeli forces and other partners.

On the ground, however, residents of Gaza City said they had come under unrelenting attack from the air. Majed al-Hosary, a resident in Zeitoun in Gaza City, told AFP that the attacks had been “extremely intense for two days”.

“With every strike, the ground shakes. There are martyrs under the rubble that no one can reach because the shelling hasn’t stopped,” he said.

“It sounded like the war was restarting,” Amr Salah, 25, told Reuters. “Tanks fired shells at houses, and several houses were hit, and the planes carried out what we call fire rings, whereby several missiles landed on some roads in eastern Gaza.”

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said that 100 dead had been brought to hospitals across Gaza over the past 24 hours, including 31 people who were killed at aid sites. Five more people had also died of malnutrition, it added.

Israel has faced mounting criticism over the 22-month-long war with Hamas, with UN-backed experts warning of widespread famine unfolding in the besieged territory.

On Tuesday members of an international group of former leaders known as “The Elders” for the first time called the war in Gaza an “unfolding genocide” and blamed Israel for causing famine among its population.

Following a visit to the Gaza border, Helen Clark and Mary Robinson, a former prime minister of New Zealand and a former president of Ireland, said in a joint statement: “What we saw and heard underlines our personal conviction that there is not only an unfolding, human-caused famine in Gaza. There is an unfolding genocide.”

The statement mirrors those of leading Israeli rights groups, including B’Tselem, which said it had reached an “unequivocal conclusion” that Israel was attempting to “destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”.

Israel strongly rejects the accusations, saying its forces target terrorists and never civilians, and that Hamas was responsible for the suffering in Gaza.

On Sunday, the IDF killed five Al Jazeera journalists in a targeted attack on a media tent in Gaza City, sparking widespread international condemnation. It said it had killed well known reporter Anas al-Sharif, whom it alleged “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”, and made no mention of the others.

Media freedom groups said it had provided little evidence for its claims. Al Jazeera’s managing editor said Israel wanted to “silence the coverage of any channel of reporting from inside Gaza”.

Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in its attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Israel’s response in Gaza has killed at least 61,599 Palestinians, according to the health ministry, whose toll the UN considers reliable.

At least three people have died in a scorching heatwave that is fuelling dozens of wildfires across parts of southern Europe, forcing thousands of people from their homes.

Red heat alerts have been issued in parts of Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and the Balkans, warning of significant risks to health as temperatures push above 40C (104F).

Spain’s weather service Aemet said temperatures could reach 44C (111.2F) in Seville and Cordoba, while southern Portugal could also hit 44C.

In Spain, an equestrian centre employee died after suffering severe burns in Tres Cantos, near Madrid, where winds over 70km/h (43mph) drove flames near homes, forcing hundreds to flee.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday that rescue services “are working tirelessly to extinguish the fires”.

“We are at extreme risk of forest fires. Please be very cautious,” he added in a post on X.

In Spain’s north-western region of Castile and Leon, almost 4,000 people were evacuated and more than 30 blazes were reported – with one threatening the Unesco-listed Las Médulas, renowned for its ancient gold mines.

Another 2,000 people were evacuated from hotels and homes near the tourist hotspot of Tarifa in the southern region of Andalusia.

Almost 1,000 soldiers were deployed to battle wildfires around the country, Spain’s national military emergency unit said on Tuesday morning.

In neighbouring Portugal, firefighters battled three large wildfires, with the most serious near Trancoso contained in the centre of the country on Tuesday.

More than 1,300 firefighters and 14 aircraft were deployed, with Morocco sending two planes after Portuguese water bombers broke down, Reuters reported. Authorities warned southern regions could hit 44C, with the temperature not expected to dip below 25C.

One child died of heatstroke in Italy on Monday, where temperatures of 40C are expected to hit later this week. Red heat alerts were in place for at least 10 Italian cities, including Rome, Milan and Florence.

A four-year-old Romanian boy, who was found unconscious in a car in Sardinia was airlifted to a hospital in Rome but died due to irreversible brain damage, reportedly caused by heatstroke, medical authorities told AFP.

Almost three-quarters of France is under heat alerts, with temperatures forecast to top 36C in the Paris region and 40C in the Rhône Valley.

French Health Minister Catherine Vautrin said hospitals were braced for fallout from the country’s second heatwave in just a few weeks.

Greece is battling more than 150 wildfires across the country, exacerbated by fierce winds, with nearly 5,000 firefighters and dozens of aircraft tackling the blazes.

Mass evacuations are under way on touristic island Zakynthos and in western Achaia, where blazes have destroyed homes, vehicles and businesses.

Grigoris Alexopoulos, the mayor of western Achaia, said the fires in the region were “out of control”, adding some coastal areas have been “irreparably damaged”.

Rescue boats have been evacuating beachgoers trapped by advancing flames on Chios and authorities have requested several EU firefighting aircraft.

Greek authorities are warning the conditions could become even more challenging in the coming days.

Turkey has brought several major fires under control, including in Canakkale and Izmir, after hundreds were evacuated and the Dardanelles Strait and Canakkale airport were closed.

In Montenegro, a soldier died and another was injured when their water tanker overturned while fighting fires near the capital Podgorica.

Wildfires in Albania forced people to evacuate their homes on Monday, while in Croatia a large fire raged in Split and was contained on Tuesday.

Parts of the UK are sweltering in its fourth heatwave of the year, with temperatures hitting 33C and amber and yellow heat health alerts in place for all of England.

Two grassfires broke out in the capital on Tuesday, one in Ealing and another in Wanstead Flats, burning more than 17 acres combined.

Scientists warn global warming is making Mediterranean summers hotter and drier, fuelling longer and more intense fire seasons.

The Trump administration has significantly rewritten and downscaled the US government’s annual report on global human rights abuses.

The state department document, previously seen as the most comprehensive study of its kind by any government, significantly reduces criticism of some US allies such as Israel and El Salvador while escalating disapproval of perceived foes such as Brazil and South Africa.

Entire sections included in reports from previous years are also eliminated, dramatically reducing coverage of issues including government corruption and persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals.

State department officials say it was “restructured” to “remove redundancies” and “increase readability”.

The report also describes the human rights situation as having “worsened” in some of the closest allies of the United States, including the UK, France and Germany, due to regulations on online hate speech.

The language used echoes previous criticism by the Trump administration and some US tech bosses who oppose online harm reduction laws in some European countries, portraying them as attacks on free speech.

Uzra Zeya, a former senior state department official who now runs the charity Human Rights First, accused the Trump administration of “gutting” decades of highly respected work on human rights protections and an “abandonment of core values” to the US.

“It sends a signal that there’s going to be a free pass from the United States government, that it will look the other way if a government is willing to cut deals or do the bidding of this administration,” she told the BBC.

The report accuses the UK of “significant human rights issues”, including “credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression”. It also describes prosecution and punishment for human rights abuses as “inconsistent”.

In response, a UK Government spokesman said: “Free speech is vital for democracy around the world including here in the UK and we are proud to uphold freedoms whilst keeping our citizens safe.”

In the UK last year, following the stabbing deaths of three young girls in Southport, England, authorities took action against social media users who falsely alleged that an asylum seeker was responsible and urged revenge.

Brazil, which the Trump administration has frequently criticised, was singled out in the state department report for “disproportionate action to undermine freedom of speech”.

Both the UK and Brazil have previously rejected similar criticism from the US.

In the section on Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, the report says the ongoing war “led to a rise in reports of human rights violations”.

However, the report continues, “the government took several credible steps to identify officials who committed human rights abuses”. It also accuses Hamas and Hezbollah of war crimes, charges both have denied.

The report omits reference to the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former defence minister Yoav Gallant and a Hamas commander, Mohammed Deif.

ICC judges concluded there were “reasonable grounds” that the men bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes. Both Israel and Hamas have rejected the allegations.

El Salvador has been accused by Amnesty International of “arbitrary detentions and human rights violations”, as well as “inhumane” detention conditions.

However, the state department report concluded there were “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses”.

Trump has a close relationship with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, whom he lauded in April as “one hell of a president” and doing a “great job”.

The document was published following months of delay amid reports of significant internal dissent at the state department over its contents.

It follows internal guidance issued by political leaders earlier this year reportedly advising staff to shorten the reports to remove some references to issues including corruption and gender-based crimes, and follows some executive orders on related issues issued by President Trump.

During a visit to Saudi Arabia earlier this year Trump berated “Western interventionists” and said the US would no longer be “giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs”.

A homeless man in the Australian state of Victoria has been charged with the alleged murder of a pregnant woman and her partner, whose head was decapitated.

Police were called to a unit in Melbourne’s south-east on Monday evening where they found the bodies of Athena Georgopoulos, 39, and Andrew Gunn, 50.

Several hours later, a man, 34, was arrested at a train station about 7km from the scene. He was charged with double murder and is due to appear in court on Wednesday.

Police say the attack appears to be targeted but the relationship between the couple and the accused is not yet known. Police are also investigating graffiti outside the unit with the words “betrayal” and “enough is enough”.

Victoria police first received a call on Monday evening, requesting a welfare check at the Mount Waverley unit after “some yelling” was heard from the property.

Police received a second call a few minutes later, prompting authorities to rush to the address, arriving just before 22:00 (13:00 BST) where the two bodies were found.

According to local media reports, Georgopoulos was five months pregnant with a baby girl.

Early investigations suggest the alleged suspect arrived at the unit on Monday evening, and “then obviously an altercation has occurred,” police told the media.

“It appears to be a targeted attack, our suspect is known to the address,” homicide squad detective Dean Thomas said.

“It does not appear to be a random attack and we are not looking for anybody else.”

Thomas said the suspect appears to have known Mr Gunn, but police were still working out the connection.

A Victoria Police spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that detectives will also investigate if graffiti found outside the unit is relevant to the murder investigation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reaffirmed his “friendship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, ahead of his talks with Donald Trump on Friday.

It also comes as the BBC reported the “slave-like” condition facing thousands of North Korean workers sent to Russia to take part in construction projects.

Putin and Kim spoke on Tuesday, with the Russian leader praising Pyongyang’s military support for his country’s war against Ukraine.

This week, Russia has been making fresh military advances in Ukraine, leading to a sudden thrust near the eastern town of Dobropillia and advancing 10km (six miles) in a short period of time.

Kim and Putin “reaffirmed their commitment to the further development of friendship relations, good-neighbourliness and cooperation,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

Putin gave the North Korean leader an update on the Alaska summit’s preparation, sharing with him “information in the context of the upcoming talks with US President Donald Trump,” the Kremlin said.

The official North Korean statement did not mention this.

Repeating his earlier statement, Putin “praised the assistance provided by [North Korea’s] support during the liberation of the territory of the Kursk region”, according to his office.

The Ukrainian army briefly invaded Russia’s Kursk region last year in an unexpected offensive that showed Western allies its capability to fight back against Russia, which currently occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s territories.

Putin and Kim spoke just days before the Russian leader is expected to travel to Alaska to meet Trump, his first face-to-face meeting with a US president since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The war, while causing Russia near-complete economic and diplomatic isolation from the West, has seen unprecedented collaboration between Moscow and Pyongyang. At least 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to fight side by side with their Russian counterparts, according to Ukraine and South Korea.

North Korea also provided Russia with missiles, artillery shells and labourers.

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

• Read more: North Koreans tell BBC they are being sent to work ‘like slaves’ in Russia

A US woman who was hired as a killer and tried to shoot a man in the UK at point-blank range has been found guilty of conspiracy to murder.

Would-be assassin Aimee Betro, from West Allis in Wisconsin, flew into the country as part of a plot to attack a British family in Birmingham in 2019, before going on the run for nearly five years.

Her co-conspirators had been involved in a feud with the family, her trial heard.

During the case at Birmingham Crown Court, jurors were told Betro hid her identity using a niqab when she tried to fire shots on Measham Grove, Yardley, but her gun jammed and the individual at whom she had aimed fled the scene unharmed.

Jurors deliberated for almost 21 hours before convicting Betro of conspiracy to murder, possessing a self-loading pistol with intent to cause fear of violence, and illegally importing ammunition.

During the trial, they heard the defendant had been involved in a conspiracy with two men – Mohammed Nazir and Mohammed Aslam – as part of their vendetta against Birmingham businessman Aslat Mahumad.

Prosecutors said revenge was the men’s motive after Nazir and Aslam were injured during disorder at Mr Mahumad’s clothing boutique in July 2018.

A plot was hatched, the court heard, to have someone kill Mr Mahumad or a member of his family. That person was Betro.

But despite the events in which she was a key player, detectives have suggested records point to Betro having virtually no criminal past prior to the murder plot.

She nevertheless produced a gun on a September night six years ago, with Mr Mahumad’s son, Sikander Ali, the one to face the barrel after she lay in wait outside their family home.

Her convictions came after Nazir, 31, and his father Aslam, 59, both from Derby, were jailed last year having been convicted of conspiracy to murder.

Before the attempted shooting, Betro met up with Nazir, whom she had initially met online some time earlier, police said.

Officers found a video on his phone of a gun, believed to be the one used in Birmingham, being test fired in Derby days before Betro struck. She had travelled to Derby, police said, on the same day the footage was filmed.

On the night of the shooting, Betro lay in wait in a car she had bought earlier that day under a false name.

When Sikander Ali arrived at the property – and in CCTV scenes shown to the jury – Betro, with her face covered, approached him and fired at point-blank range.

After the gun jammed, Mr Ali managed to escape by reversing in his SUV.

Betro returned to the scene in a taxi in the early hours of the following day and fired three shots through the windows of the empty family home. She fled the UK the day after.

Prior to that return visit to the house, jurors were told, Betro sent messages to Mr Mahumad, which included: “Where are you hiding?” “Stop playing hide and seek, you are lucky it jammed.”

Hannah Sidaway, from the Crown Prosecution Service in the West Midlands, said it was “sheer luck” that Mr Ali escaped unscathed.

Betro’s motive for becoming involved in the plot remains unclear.

Ms Sidaway said “only Betro” knew what drove her “or what she sought to gain from becoming embroiled in a crime that meant she travelled hundreds of miles from Wisconsin to Birmingham”.

As the jury returned its verdicts, Betro, wearing a purple T-shirt and her hair in space buns, showed no obvious reaction and stared towards jurors.

She was found guilty by a majority 11-1 verdict on the conspiracy to murder and firearm charges, and by a unanimous verdict on the ammunition charge. She is due to be sentenced on 21 August.

Police said the ammunition charge related to a plot running alongside the events in Birmingham, with Betro sending the illegal goods from the US to a man in Derbyshire – another rival of Nazir – in the hope that receiving the contraband would get him arrested.

That plan was foiled too, police said.

Speaking after Betro was convicted, Det Ch Insp Alastair Orencas said only a malfunction of her pistol or a “rogue” bullet had prevented Betro from shooting Mr Ali.

Betro’s use of a niqab to hide her face “didn’t work very well” as “the footwear didn’t change, phones didn’t change” and various CCTV cameras caught her in the area of the shooting, Det Ch Insp Orencas said.

“It was a fairly poor attempt [at disguise] and again, whether or not the attitude was that the British police wouldn’t be up to it, I think she was fatally flawed, if that was ever the consideration in her mind,” he noted.

Denying the charges against her in court, Betro said she was in Birmingham city centre at the time of the first incident and with friends at the time of the second.

She maintained during the proceedings that a woman described as having an American accent who bought a vehicle linked to the plot was not her, and rejected the claims that Nazir or his father got her involved in a plan to kill, or that she was the person who actually wielded the gun.

While she was on the run, Betro spent several years in Armenia, before being detained by authorities and extradited to face trial, after being tracked down to a hideout by the Daily Mail newspaper.

Thanking the Mail for its investigation, Det Ch Insp Orencas said: “There were parallel inquiries going on but, without a doubt, the Daily Mail were of great assistance.

“And I’ll say thank you on record to the Mail with regard to that.”

US woman Aimee Betro has been found guilty of attempting to shoot a man dead in the UK. But the investigation into the Wisconsin native revealed her to be “fairly unexceptional” with virtually no “criminal footprint”. And it remains unclear why she became a would-be contract killer.

On an autumn night six years ago, Betro pointed a 9mm gun at Sikander Ali in a suburban cul-de-sac and pulled the trigger, as she had been hired to do.

But instead of firing, the weapon jammed – saving the man’s life.

It marked the mid-point of a plot more suited to a television drama, and one that eventually ended several years later and thousands of miles away with Betro’s capture in Armenia.

It started, however, the year before the botched shooting in 2019, at a clothes shop in Birmingham’s Alum Rock.

In 2018, Mohammed Aslam and his son Mohammed Nabil Nazir were injured during a fight at a shop owned by Mr Ali’s father, Aslat Mahumad.

The clash sparked a violent feud between the families, Birmingham Crown Court heard, which “clearly led Nazir and Aslam to conspire to have someone kill Aslat Mahumad or a member of his family”.

The pair, from Derby, turned to Betro – a woman not known by police “to have a huge footprint criminally” in the US or anywhere, according to Det Ch Insp Alastair Orencas from West Midlands Police’s major crime unit.

“[She was] a fairly unexceptional individual,” he said. “On the face of it, a normal-looking individual [but] prepared to do an outrageous, audacious and persistent murder.”

Betro, a childhood development and graphic design graduate from the US city of West Allis, arrived in the UK in August 2019 to carry out Aslam and Nazir’s vendetta.

The court heard she had previously met Nazir via a dating app and slept with him at an Airbnb in London’s Kings Cross during a visit to the UK between December 2018 and January 2019, although it remains unclear how she came to be hired to carry out the shooting.

Prior to the attack on 7 September, she stayed at hotels in London, Manchester, Derby and Birmingham and met her co-conspirators at various points, jurors heard.

This included an incident three days before the attempted murder when footage found on Nazir’s phone showed a gun being fired and jamming.

On the day of the shooting, Betro – wearing a summer dress, hoodie and flip-flops – bought a second-hand Mercedes from a garage in Alum Rock under the name Becky Booth.

Later that day, she was seen “driving in convoy” with Nazir and Aslam “scoping out” Measham Grove, where Mr Mahumad lived.

She then waited in the cul-de-sac for her victim and disguised herself with a niqab, jurors heard.

When Mr Ali pulled up, she got out and fired the gun directly at him but it did not discharge, prompting him to jump back in his car and flee.

The distance between the firearm and Mr Ali meant there would have been little-to-no chance of survival had it gone off, according to Det Ch Insp Orencas.

“It was absolute pure chance this didn’t culminate in a murder investigation,” he said.

Betro initially fled the scene but returned by taxi just after midnight and fired three shots at the family home.

By 13:30 BST, she was at Manchester Airport and flew to the US, prosecutors said.

Days later, Nazir followed and according to Betro, the pair rented a car and drove to Seattle “just for a road trip” with stops at an amusement park, Area 51 in Nevada, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

She told jurors she did not know there had been a shooting in Measham Grove and Nazir had not mentioned it during his time in the States.

The investigation to find Betro and bring her co-conspirators to justice not only spanned several years but was hampered by the pandemic and involved the FBI, National Crime Agency and two UK police forces.

Eventually, she was traced to a housing complex on the outskirts of Yerevan in Armenia and apprehended by police before she was extradited to the UK.

From the start, Betro denied her involvement and told the trial it was “all just a terrible coincidence” that she was around the corner from the scene of the attempted assassination six minutes later.

She claimed it was in fact the work of “another American woman” who sounded similar to her, used the same phone and wore the same sort of trainers.

Jurors found her guilty of conspiracy to murder by majority verdict after almost 21 hours of deliberation.

Det Ch Insp Orencas described Betro as someone who was “extremely dangerous and extremely motivated to cause the worst harm to people”.

Nor was her involvement “off-the-cuff… madness” but pre-planned with others across continents, he added.

“I think [she] has had a somewhat problematic relationship with the truth in not accepting what she was accused of.”

Asked if he believed Betro was paid or had acted out of loyalty to her partner Nazir, the officer said: “We’ve not seen evidence of payments.

“They met on a dating site, whether this is a partner doing something for another partner, again, there’s no clear evidence of that. I see it as a criminal association and a murderous plot.”

Aslam, 56, and Nazir, 31, were jailed for conspiracy to murder in November 2024.

Betro will be sentenced on 21 August.

Artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Perplexity has made a surprise $34.5bn (£25.6bn) takeover bid for Google’s Chrome internet browser.

Moving Chrome to an independent operator committed to user safety would benefit the public, Perplexity said in a letter to Sundar Pichai, the boss of Google’s owner Alphabet.

But one technology industry investor called the offer a “stunt” that is a much lower than Chrome’s true value and highlighted that it is not clear whether the platform would is even for sale.

The BBC has contacted Google for comment. The firm has not announced any plans to sell Chrome – the world’s most popular web browser with an estimated three billion-plus users.

Google’s dominance of the search engine and online advertising market has come under intense scrutiny, with the technology giant embroiled in years of legal wrangling as part of two antitrust cases.

A US federal judge is expected to issue a ruling this month that could see Google being ordered to break up its search business.

The company has said it would appeal such a ruling, saying the idea of spinning off Chrome was an “unprecedented proposal” that would harm consumers and security.

A spokesman for Perplexity told the BBC that its bid marks an “important commitment to the open web, user choice, and continuity for everyone who has chosen Chrome.”

As part of the proposed takeover, Perplexity said it would continue to have Google as the default search engine within Chrome, though users could adjust their settings.

The firm said it would also maintain and support Chromium, a widely-used open-source platform that supports Chrome and other browsers including Microsoft Edge and Opera.

Perplexity did not respond to queries about how the proposed deal would be funded. In July, it had an estimated value of $18bn.

Technology industry investor and start-up founder Heath Ahrens called Perplexity’s move a “stunt, and nowhere near Chrome’s true value, given its unmatched data and reach.”

“The offer isn’t serious, but if someone like Sam Altman or Elon Musk tripled it, they could genuinely secure dominance for their AI,” he added.

It is also not clear whether Google is considering selling the platform, Tomasz Tunguz from Theory Ventures told the BBC.

He also said the offer is a lot lower than the browser is worth “given the value of Chrome is likely significantly higher – maybe ten times more valuable than the bid or more.”

Perplexity’s app is among the rising players in the generative AI race, alongside more well-known platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

Last month, it launched an AI-powered browser called Comet.

The company made headlines earlier this year after offering to buy the American version of TikTok, which faces a deadline in September to be sold by its Chinese owner or be banned in the US.

Perplexity has reportedly drawn interest from technology giants including Apple and Facebook-owner Meta.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have changed their names to protect them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The US and Russia have agreed to hold a meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on Friday 15 August, to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump announced the meeting a week beforehand – the same day as his deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine or face more US sanctions.

Three rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine held at Trump’s behest this summer have yet to bring the two sides any closer to peace.

Here is what we know about the meeting between the two leaders, taking place in Alaska – which was once Russian territory – in Anchorage.

The US purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, lending a historical resonance to the meeting. It became a US state in 1959.

Russian presidential assistant Yuri Ushakov pointed out that the two countries are neighbours, with only the Bering Strait separating them.

“It seems quite logical for our delegation simply to fly over the Bering Strait and for such an important and anticipated summit of the leaders of the two countries to be held in Alaska,” Ushakov said.

The last time Alaska took centre-stage in an American diplomatic event was in March 2021, when Joe Biden’s newly minted diplomatic and national security team met their Chinese counterparts in Anchorage.

The sit-down turned acrimonious, with the Chinese accusing the Americans of “condescension and hypocrisy”.

The meeting will be in Anchorage, the White House confirmed on Tuesday.

When announcing the bilateral, Trump said the location would be “a very popular one for a number of reasons”, without disclosing it would be in the state’s largest city.

The pair will be hosted at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, the largest military installation in Alaska. The 64,000 acre base is a key US site for Arctic military readiness.

Trump has been pushing hard – without much success – to end the war in Ukraine.

As a presidential candidate, he pledged that he could end the war within 24 hours of taking office. He has also repeatedly argued that the war “never would have happened” if he had been president at the time of Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Last month, Trump told the BBC that he was “disappointed” by Putin.

Frustrations grew and Trump set an 8 August deadline for Putin to agree to an immediate ceasefire or face more severe US sanctions.

As the deadline hit, Trump instead announced he and Putin would meet in person on 15 August.

The meeting comes after US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff held “highly productive” talks with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, according to Trump.

Ahead of the meeting, the White House sought to play down speculation that the bilateral could yield a ceasefire.

“This is a listening exercise for the president,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. She added that Trump may travel to Russia following the Alaska trip.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump said he viewed the summit as a “feel-out meeting” aimed at urging Putin to end the war.

• Trump says he will try to get back territory for Ukraine in talks with Putin
• Zelensky could still join Trump and Putin, but rest of Europe is shut out

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not expected to attend. Trump said on Monday: “I would say he could go, but he’s been to a lot of meetings.”

Trump did, however, say that Zelensky would be the first person he would call afterwards.

A White House official later said that Trump and Zelensky would meet virtually on Wednesday, ahead of the US president’s summit with Putin. The Zelensky meeting will be joined by several European leaders.

Putin had requested that Zelensky be excluded, although the White House has previously said that Trump was willing to hold a trilateral in which all three leaders were present.

Zelensky has said any agreements without input from Ukraine would amount to “dead decisions”.

While both Russia and Ukraine have long said that they want the war to end, both countries want things that the other harshly opposes.

Trump said on Monday he was “going to try to get some of that [Russian-occupied] territory back for Ukraine”. But he also warned that there might have to be “some swapping, changes in land”.

Ukraine, however, has been adamant that it will not accept Russian control of regions that Moscow has seized, including Crimea.

Zelensky pushed back this week against any idea of “swapping” territories.

“We will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated,” the Ukrainian president said.

Meanwhile, Putin has not budged from his territorial demands, Ukraine’s neutrality and the future size of its army.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in part, over Putin’s belief the Western defensive alliance, Nato, was using the neighbouring country to gain a foothold to bring its troops closer to Russia’s borders.

The Trump administration has been attempting to sway European leaders on a ceasefire deal that would hand over swathes of Ukrainian territory to Russia, the BBC’s US partner CBS News has reported.

The agreement would allow Russia to keep control of the Crimean peninsula, and take the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which is made up of Donetsk and Luhansk, according to sources familiar with the talks.

Russia illegally occupied Crimea in 2014 and its forces control the majority of the Donbas region.

Under the deal, Russia would have to give up the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where it currently has some military control.

Speaking to Fox News, US Vice-President JD Vance said any future deal was “not going to make anybody super happy”.

“You’ve got to make peace here… you can’t finger point,” he said.

“The way to peace is to have a decisive leader to sit down and force people to come together.”

• ANALYSIS: Why Trump-Putin relationship has soured
• EXPLAINER: Why did Putin’s Russia invade Ukraine?
• VISUALS: Tracking the war in maps
• GLOBAL FALLOUT: How the global economy could be impacted
• VERIFY: Russian attacks on Ukraine double since Trump inauguration
• GROUND REPORT: On Ukraine’s front line, twisted wreckage shows sanctions haven’t yet stopped Russia

Rolls-Royce’s plan to power artificial intelligence (AI) with its nuclear reactors could make it the UK’s most valuable company, its boss has said.

The engineering firm has signed deals to provide small modular reactors (SMRs) to the UK and Czech governments to power AI-driven data centres.

AI has boomed in popularity since 2022, but the technology uses lots of energy, something which has raised practical and environmental concerns.

Rolls-Royce chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic told the BBC it has the “potential” to become the UK’s highest-valued company by overtaking the largest firms on the London Stock Exchange thanks to its SMR deals.

“There is no private company in the world with the nuclear capability we have. If we are not market leader globally, we did something wrong,” he said.

Mr Erginbilgic has overseen a ten-fold increase in Rolls-Royce’s share price since taking over in January 2023.

However, he has ruled out the idea of Rolls-Royce seeking to list its shares in New York as British chip designer Arm has done and the likes of Shell and AstraZeneca have considered in the search for higher valuations.

This is despite the fact that 50% of its shareholders and customers are US-based.

“It’s not in our plan,” said Mr Erginbilgic, a Turkish energy industry veteran. “I don’t agree with the idea you can only perform in the US. That’s not true and hopefully we have demonstrated that.”

Rolls-Royce already supplies the reactors that power dozens of nuclear submarines. Mr Erginbilgic said the company has a massive advantage in the future market of bringing that technology on land in the form of SMRs.

SMRs are not only smaller but quicker to build than traditional nuclear plants, with costs likely to come down as units are rolled out.

He estimates that the world will need 400 SMRs by 2050. At a cost of up to $3bn (£2.2bn) each, that’s another trillion dollar-plus market he wants and expects Rolls-Royce to dominate.

The company has signed a deal to develop six SMRs for the Czech Republic and is developing three for the UK.

But it remains an unproven technology. Mr Erginbilgic conceded he could not currently point to a working SMR example but said he was confident in its future potential.

There are also concerns about the demands on water supplies from the data centre and SMR cooling systems.

In response, companies including Google, Microsoft and Meta have signed deals to take energy from SMRs in the US when they are available.

Rolls-Royce sees SMRs as key to its future, but its biggest business is aircraft engines.

Already dominant in supplying engines to wide-bodied aircraft like Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, it plans to break into the next generation of narrow-bodied aircraft like the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. This market is worth $1.6tn – nine times that of the wide-bodied .

Rolls-Royce is a bit player in a market that has powerful and successful leaders, and that rival Pratt and Witney lost $8bn trying and failing to break into.

The market is dominated by CFM International – a joint venture between US-based GE Aerospace and French company Safran Aerospace Engines.

Industry veterans told the BBC that market leaders can and will drop prices to airline customers long enough to see off a new assault on their market dominance.

But Mr Erginbilgic said this is not just the biggest business opportunity for Rolls-Royce. Rather, it is “for industrial strategy… the single biggest opportunity for the UK for economic growth”.

“No other UK opportunity, I challenge, will match that,” he said.

Although Rolls-Royce sold its car making business to BMW nearly 30 years ago, the name of the company is still synonymous with British engineering excellence.

But in the early part of this decade that shine had worn off. The company was heavily indebted, its profit margins were non-existent, and thousands of staff were being laid off.

When Mr Erginbilgic took over in January 2023, he likened the company to “a burning platform”.

“Our cost of capital was 12%, our return was 4% so every time we invested we destroyed value,” he said.

Two and a half years later, the company expects to make a profit of over £3bn, its debt levels have fallen and shares have risen over 1,000% – a ten-fold rise.

So how did that happen? And is Mr Erginbilgic right to think that Rolls-Royce’s roll is only just starting?

The timing of his appointment was fortunate according to some industry veterans.

Rolls-Royce’s biggest business – supplying engines to commercial airlines – has rebounded strongly from the Covid pandemic.

The company’s most successful product – the Trent series of aircraft engines – are at the sweet spot of profitability as the returns on investment in their development over a decade ago begin to pour into company coffers.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 arguably made it almost inevitable that its defence business would see higher spending from European governments – which has been confirmed by recent announcements.

Unions have not always been fans of Mr Erginbilgic’s hard-charging approach.

In October 2023, one of his first major move was cutting jobs, which drew criticism from Sharon Graham, the boss of the Unite union.

“This announcement appears to be about appeasing the markets and its shareholders while ignoring its workers,” she said at the time.

However, overall global headcount has grown from 43,000 to 45,000 since 2023 and union sources say there is “grudging respect” for Mr Erginbilgic.

Those sources give him one third of the credit for the turnaround around in the company’s fortunes, with a third credited to market conditions and a third to his predecessor Warren East for “steadying the ship”.

So does Mr Erginbilgic really believe that Rolls-Royce can be the UK’s most valuable company – overtaking the likes of AstraZeneca, HSBC, and Shell?

“We are now number five in the FTSE. I believe the growth potential we created in the company right now, in our existing business and our new businesses, actually yes – we have that potential.”

Rolls-Royce is undoubtedly a company with the wind at its back – and Tufan Ergenbilgic certainly believes he has set the sails just right.

The Real Housewives franchise has spread around the world, with viewers lapping up the partying and catfighting of wealthy socialites in locations from Orange County to Sydney to Nairobi. But there hasn’t been a series based in London – until now.

“Go back to Paddington.”

On its own, it sounds harmless enough, more like directions than an insult. But for Belgravia’s gilded set, being told to leave the rarefied streets and return to a supposedly less desirable part of the English capital cuts deep.

It’s Amanda Cronin, a former model and now skincare founder, who makes the remark in a clip from The Real Housewives of London.

For Cronin and her five co-stars – Juliet Angus, Karen Loderick-Peace, Juliet Mayhew, Panthea Parker, and Nessie Welschinger – it’s just one of the many dramatic moments as the international franchise arrives in the city.

Speaking in a West End hotel, Cronin laughs about how quickly the insult went viral and stands by the fact that her co-star Angus, an American socialite who also appeared in Ladies of London, should be banished from SW3.

Cronin says she “didn’t hesitate” when she was asked to be on the show. “It’s just a massive opportunity and such a blessing – to be a housewife is huge so I grabbed it and ran with it.”

Parker, an Iranian-born north London socialite, admits she had her doubts about joining, but didn’t want to live with the regret of turning down such a big franchise.

And the brand really is huge – there have been 11 US editions and more than 30 international ones.

The London version’s cast claim their exploits put the rest in the shade, with producers cutting the cameras and telling the women to dial down the drama at times.

Angus says producers of other reality shows often bemoan that everyone is getting on and there isn’t enough drama. “But that did not happen once” on this series, she says.

Cronin says: “The producers came to my room one day and said ‘You’re too strong, your blows are too low and there was too much drama’.”

Parker adds that producers told her they were doing her a favour by cutting out parts of an argument in the first episode.

“I don’t think anyone has seen anything like this before,” says Welschinger, an award-winning cake designer whose creations have graced Buckingham Palace.

Perhaps the reason for so much friction is the fact that the group of six women weren’t friends before the show.

They knew each other, but the links are tenuous – some share a dentist, others mingled in the same circles, while a few attended similar exclusive soirées in the capital.

Emotions certainly did run high when they came together for the show, and many of the women admit to having regrets about saying certain things, or feel embarrassed about how they acted when the cameras were rolling.

But Loderick-Peace, a Housewives veteran from Jersey UK and Cheshire, says she doesn’t dwell on her mistakes.

“You cannot live your life looking in the rear view mirror, you’re going to stress yourself out. You just have to own it and life is about making mistakes, rising up, brushing yourself off and starting all over again.”

The group grew closer “because we spend so much time together filming”, she adds.

“Filming feels like a year, so you get to know each other on another level. We even got to know each other better than how we know some of our closest friends.”

Before stepping in front of the cameras, the London housewives sought advice from women who had previously been in their positions.

Mayhew, an Australian-born former Miss Galaxy Universe, jokes that Taleen Marie from the Dubai show advised her to take lots of Valium. Welschinger says Lisa Barlow from Salt Lake City told her to “enjoy every second because a lot of women want this but not everyone can get it”.

Loderick-Peace adds that several existing housewives told her the most important thing was to “just be yourself” – and all the London cast insist they have put their authentic selves on screen.

“You can’t curate a persona because audiences realise that,” she explains.

Most of the housewives are no strangers to reality TV, and as a result tend to forget the cameras are rolling after a while.

But that’s not always the case for their families. We meet spouses and children, some of whom are more enthusiastic than others about being tangentially pulled into the Real Housewives vortex.

“I sat down and discussed the pros and cons with my family, and after three weeks everyone said yes,” Parker says. Except one, that is.

“My eldest son didn’t want to be in it at all and I begged him to be on a FaceTime so he did. Then he was regretting it, but I said he was giving himself too much importance and it was probably only going to be two seconds.”

Cronin and Loderick-Peace’s children chose not to appear, but Welschinger says her whole family, particularly her husband, enjoyed the experience.

“I think it was because the production team made you feel safe and they know what they’re doing so you can trust the process.”

The husbands, usually dressed in suits as they leave for work or take business calls, appear fleetingly in the first episode.

For some of the housewives, their lifestyle is made entirely possible through the salaries of their spouses.

Loderick-Peace, whose husband is the former chairman and owner of West Bromwich Albion football club, says that’s not the full picture. “Behind every successful man there’s a strong woman and men can’t do it on their own,” she says.

Parker reveals her mother-in-law wanted her son to marry a woman who also worked. “My husband said, ‘Why would I do that if I have a woman that’s going to be making my home amazing, treating me like a king and making sure there’s no stress when I come back from work?'” she says.

Some critics claim the Real Housewives franchise is inherently anti-feminist – an exercise in pitting women against each other for entertainment.

But the cast push back on that narrative. As well as the heightened drama we see on screen, the friendships, mentoring and mutual support have emerged, they say, and continued after the cameras stopped rolling.

US federal prosecutors have announced criminal charges against Jimmy Cherizier, the Haitian gang leader known as “Barbecue” who leads an alliance of gangs that control much of the capitol of Port-au-Prince.

The indictment alleges that Mr Cherizier, as well as US citizen Bazile Richardson, 48, solicited funds from Haitian diaspora community in the US to help pay gang members and buy firearms in violation of US sanctions.

Mr Cherizier, a former police officer who is at large in Haiti, leads the group Viv Ansanm (Live Together). The US is offering $5m (£3.7m) for information leading to his arrest.

The group has been accused of multiple murders, kidnappings and attacks on infrastructure.

“There’s a good reason that there’s a $5m reward for information leading to Cherizier’s arrest,” US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said at a news conference on Tuesday.

“He’s a gang leader responsible for heinous human rights abuses, including violence against American citizens in Haiti.”

Prosecutors say he is suspected of playing a key role in the 2018 La Saline massacre, in which 71 people were killed, more than 400 houses were destroyed, and at least seven women raped.

Mr Richardson, who was arrested in Texas last month, is a naturalised US citizen who grew up in Haiti, prosecutors say. He was residing in North Carolina before he was taken into custody.

Also known as Fredo, Fred Lion, Leo Danger, and Lepe Blode, he helped raise funds that were then used to pay gang leaders and purchase weapons, according to officials.

Both men helped “bankroll Cherizier’s violent criminal enterprise, which is driving a security crisis in Haiti”, said Assistant US Attorney General John Eisenberg.

He added that the US “will continue to pursue those who enable Haiti’s violence and instability”.

In May, US officials designated Viv Ansanm, which has controlled the capital since around 2020, as a foreign terrorist organisation. Earlier this year, the group announced that it was declaring itself a political party.

In addition to the US, Mr Cherizier is also under sanctions from the United Nations, Canada and Britain, which accuse him of fueling violence in Haiti.

If arrested, he could be extradited to the US. However, he remains in a position of significant power on the streets and is protected by his group’s members.

In 2021, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by unidentified gunmen in Port-au-Prince.

Since then the country – the poorest in the Americas – has been wracked by economic chaos, little functioning political control and increasingly violent gang warfare.

Gang control in Port-au-Prince has led to an almost complete breakdown of law and order, the collapse of health services and emergence of a food security crisis.

In recent months, a UN backed Kenyan led security force has failed to take back control of the Haitian capital.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis in the country has sunk to new levels. UN reports estimate that 5.7 million people – more than half of Haiti’s population – are facing acute food insecurity and there are over one million internally displaced people.

Four teenagers have been arrested over a burglary that left actor Brad Pitt’s home ransacked, police said.

The suspects are allegedly behind a number of “celebrity burglaries” that targeted the houses of actors and professional athletes, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said.

He said the male suspects, two 18-year-olds, a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old, are street gang members, and property stolen in the burglaries was found when police searched their homes.

Police did not name those whose properties were targeted, but celebrities including Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, LA Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto and ex-LA Football Club striker Olivier Giroud have reported break-ins this year.

The investigation started in late June after Pitt’s home was raided by a trio of masked thieves.

McDonnell said the group hopped a perimeter fence surrounding the Los Feliz home and shattered a window, hopping inside and taking items before fleeing.

Police did not confirm the home belonged to the Oscar-winning actor, but the address matched that of a property Pitt bought in 2023.

The large three-bedroom house sits just outside Griffith Park, where the famous Hollywood Sign sits. It is surrounded by a fence and greenery that shields the property from public view.

Pitt was not home at the time of the burglary and was promoting his new film, F1. The BBC has contacted representatives for the actor.

McDonnell said investigators found the suspects were part of a crew that “were burglarizing various high-profile residents throughout the city”, which he said included homes of “actors and professional athletes”.

Last week, authorities followed the four suspects and were able to arrest them on burglary charges, he added.

Police did not elaborate on what items were recovered after police searched their homes.

McDonnell said burglars like this group had become increasingly smart in their crimes – planting surveillance cameras in nearby flowerbeds or across the street from homes they target to monitor a victim’s routine.

He said thieves had also been using wi-fi jammers to knock out home surveillance systems and cameras that could alert homeowners or police of a break-in.

He noted that celebrities and athletes can be easier targets since their appearances and games are publicised online.

He noted, though, that anyone posting on social media about their travels can unknowingly be alerting a potential thief to their location.

“We don’t really give enough thought to… [while] we want our friends to know where we are and what we’re doing, you’re telling everybody else then who may be looking to exploit your situation,” McDonnell said.

X owner Elon Musk has threatened Apple with legal action after claiming it had made it “impossible” for apps to compete with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in its App Store.

He called OpenAI boss Sam Altman a “liar” – after Altman claimed Musk used his platform to “benefit himself and his own companies”.

The row is the latest flashpoint in what is an ongoing feud between the billionaires who co-founded OpenAI – but now fiercely compete after Musk left the firm.

Apple announced a partnership with ChatGPT in June 2024 – but there is no suggestion Apple favours one app over the other, and several rival AI apps such as DeepSeek and Perplexity have topped the App Store charts since then.

The BBC has approached Apple for comment.

In a later post Musk took aim at Apple again, asking the firm why it would not promote X – or its AI app Grok – in the “Must Have” section of the App Store.

“X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps,” he said in a post now pinned to his X profile.

ChatGPT is currently the most downloaded free app in the UK, with Grok a close third. X does not make the top 40.

This seemed to draw the attention of Altman, who linked to a report by tech newsletter Platformer which claimed Musk had made his own personal X posts more prominent in people’s feeds.

The feud between Musk and Altman has, over time, encompassed a slew of lawsuits, email dumps and social media digs.

Their rivalry can be traced back a decade, with Musk’s now public belief that OpenAI, under Altman’s leadership, abandoned the principles he and others used to found it in 2015.

The firm was created with the intention of building artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI that can perform any task that a human being is capable of – but by making its technology open-source and promising to “benefit humanity”.

• What is AI and how does it work?

OpenAI was also set up as a not-for-profit company, meaning it would not aim to make money, but in 2019 it established a for-profit arm which Musk felt was antithetical to its original mission.

Musk argued in his March 2024 lawsuit that the firm had instead been focusing on “maximising profits” for its major investor Microsoft.

And while he unexpectedly dropped his lawsuit last year, OpenAI then filed a counter-suit against him in April.

It claimed the X owner had engaged “non-stop” in “bad-faith tactics” to try and slow down the company’s AI development.

OpenAI has also claimed Musk is not motivated by preserving the company’s founding mission – but rather by his “own agenda”.

And the feud has not stopped at just words and legal action. In February, Musk made a shock move to try and buy the company for $100bn (£74bn) – a bid rejected by OpenAI’s board.

The White House is set to a host an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event next year as part of 4 July celebrations in the US to mark the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.

The octagon cage fight event was announced by UFC boss Dana White, whose friendship with the president dates back to the early 2000s when Trump hosted some of the first ever UFC events at his business properties.

“It is definitely going to happen,” White told CBS Mornings.

White said he planned to meet with the president and his daughter Ivanka at the end of the month to finalise the plans. A White House official confirmed the event to the BBC.

It will mark the first time a UFC fighting competition would be hosted at the White House.

It’s unclear where the event would be hosted. UFC fights typically draw tens of thousands of people and are held in large arenas, with the sports trademarked eight-sided octogen cage in the middle.

“When he called me and asked me to do it, he said: ‘I want Ivanka in the middle of this,'” White said of his discussions with Trump.

“So Ivanka reached out to me, and her and I started talking about the possibilities, where it would be and, you know, I put together all the renderings.”

Trump had teased the idea of hosting a fight at the White House during an event last month in Iowa.

He indicated that there were ideas to build a cage for the fight on the grounds of the White House and suggested the event could host up to 25,000 people.

“We’re going to have a UFC fight, think of this, on the grounds of the White House,” Trump said at a 4 July Salute to America event in the state. “We have a lot of land there.”

He told supporters at the event, which he said would kick of a year of celebrations for the nation’s 250th birthday, that national parks and historic sites across the US would also host special events.

The UFC fight is the latest move by Trump to place his mark on the White House.

He has made renovating the entire complex of the White House a priority for his second term. So far, he’s redecorated the Oval Office with gold decor, paved over the grass lawn in the Rose Garden, erected two large flagpoles on the north and south lawns, and announced plans to build a $200m (£151m) new ballroom in the East Wing.

Last week, he walked on the roof of the West Wing, saying he was looking at “another way to spend my money for this country”.

The plans for the fight come shortly after Paramount, which owns CBS, announced a seven-year, $7.7bn deal to stream UFC fights.

The Trump administration recently approved a heavily scrutinised merger between Skydance and Paramount, which included promises and commitments by the companies to the administration before it was approved.

Mexico has sent 26 inmates suspected of playing high-profile roles in some of the country’s most powerful drug cartels to the US, the second transfer of its kind this year.

US officials said the individuals extradited included “key operatives” of major drugs gangs, and have been charged with violent offences or links to organised crime in American courts.

Mexico said the individuals – who have not been publicly identified – represented “a permanent risk to public security”.

The latest prisoner transfer came as the White House continued to put pressure on its southern neighbour to crack down on drug trafficking across the shared border, including by imposing tariffs on some products.

Mexican officials said they had agreed the inmates could be sent to the US as long as none were considered eligible for the death penalty, a condition successive governments have insisted on when considering extraditions.

The US embassy in Mexico said members of two of the country’s most prominent organised crime organisations – the Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) and Sinaloa Cartel – were among those being moved to American prisons.

One of the prisoners reportedly being transferred, Roberto Salazar, is alleged to have murdered an LA County sheriff’s deputy.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mexico’s attorney general’s office said it was extraditing a woman accused of transporting drugs across the border in 2016 and 2017. It was unclear whether the woman – named only as Rosa A – was included in the group of 26 confirmed later in the day.

In February, Mexico sent 29 prisoners wanted over links to cartels to the US, one of the biggest extraditions in the country’s history.

Among those transferred was Caro Quintero, a founding members of the Guadalajara Cartel, who is accused of murdering Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena in 1985.

The criminals involved in the latest transfer may be less well-known than those involved in February, but they are still considered significant figures by US authorities.

They reportedly include Abigael González Valencia – alias El Cuini – who is the brother-in-law of the group’s leader, Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera, and said to be a top financial boss for the cartel.

The prisoner transfer was the latest move from a Mexican government seeking to respond to the White House’s demands for stronger action against the cartels.

Last week, President Claudia Sheinbaum rejected reports that US President Donald Trump had authorised US agents to target cartel leaders within Mexico.

“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military,” she said on Friday. “We co-operate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out.”

But the latest mass extradition showed continued collaboration between Mexico and the US on the issue of fentanyl trafficking.

Sheinbaum was expected to hold the latest extraditions up as proof that her government was working hard on the security issue, should Trump again threaten to impose tariffs over the question of smuggling across the border.

BBC News has contacted the US Department of Justice for comment.

Millions of pounds worth of luxury vehicles have been seized by the Metropolitan Police to curb dangerous driving in central London.

Police seized 72 vehicles worth an estimated £6m, including identical purple Lamborghinis, in a three-day operation across Hyde Park, Kensington and Chelsea.

Drivers were issued with tickets for a variety of motoring offences, including driving with no insurance, no driving licence, disqualification, false documentation and the use of fraudulent number plates.

Officers also recovered several stolen vehicles and made eight arrests for a range of offences including a man who was wanted for actual bodily harm (ABH) and criminal damage.

One car was stopped by officers over a discrepancy with the vehicle’s insurance. But after routine checks, officers had enough information to arrest four people for immigration offences.

The force said uninsured driving was often linked to broader criminal activity including drink and drug driving, disqualified driving, stolen vehicles, money laundering, drug running and organised crime.

Luxury vehicles seized included Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bentleys that were either unroadworthy or being driven illegally.

A pair of uninsured purple Lamborghinis were also seized after they were flown into the UK for their owner’s summer trip.

One of the two drivers had been in the country for two hours and had been driving for 15 minutes before the car was seized, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau said.

Several of the seized vehicles had been brought to the UK from abroad, with drivers using motor insurance from their home countries without verifying whether the policy provided coverage in the UK, the organisation added.

Andy Trotter, from the Motor Insurers’ Bureau said: “Someone is hit by an uninsured driver every 20 minutes in the UK, someone is seriously injured by an uninsured driver every day and one person will lose their lives to an uninsured driver every week.”

One driver who was stopped by police officers told BBC London: “Apparently the car came up without insurance on this registration.

“It was my mistake because I changed it two days ago.

“On DVLA it wasn’t automatically swapped from the original reg number to the personalised one, and my mistake was not to call the insurance and declare the new reg with them.”

Special Chief Officer James Deller, from the Met’s Special Constabulary, said the operation was in response to concerns from residents and businesses that high-value vehicles were “causing a nuisance” in central and west London.

Seven men and one woman were arrested during the operation:

• A 22-year-old man who was arrested for ABH and criminal damage
• A 25-year-old man, who was later charged for possession of a Class B drug
• A 27-year-old man was arrested for theft of a motor vehicle and released under investigation
• A 23-year-old man was arrested for theft of motor vehicle, dangerous driving, failing to stop for police, no insurance, no driving licence and drug driving
• Three men, aged 26, 35 and 39, and a 23-year-old woman, were arrested on suspicion of immigration offences.

Last year’s operation saw £60m worth of vehicles seized, including a McLaren, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Ferrari and Lamborghini, mostly due to a lack of insurance.

US Vice-President JD Vance has met Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick and shadow home secretary Chris Philp at the house where he is staying during his holiday in the UK.

The BBC has been told Vance’s team invited Jenrick and Philp to a private meeting with the vice-president in the Cotswolds on Tuesday.

Vance and his family are visiting the area in south-west England for their summer break away from Washington DC.

The BBC has approached a Vance spokesperson for comment.

Vance arrived in the UK last week and met David Lammy for talks about Gaza and other international affairs at the foreign secretary’s official residence, Chevening House, in Kent on Friday.

The vice-president is not due to meet Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who was speaking to business owners in the Isle of Wight on Tuesday.

A Conservative spokesman said aides for Badenoch and Vance had been discussing a meeting but “just couldn’t make it work with schedules”.

Badenoch met Vance last year when she was in Washington DC and had dinner with the vice-president.

Philp and Jenrick, who was defeated by Badenoch in the Tory leadership contest last year, met Vance for the first time in the Cotswolds.

Jenrick and Vance have taken similar positions on a range of policy issues, from immigration to free speech.

The vice-president has also met Thomas Skinner, a pillow salesman who appeared on series 15 of The Apprentice.

In a post on X, Skinner posted a picture of himself with Vance with the message: “Here is a pic of me and vice-president Vance towards the end of the night after a few beers.

“I’m overdressed in my suit but when the VP invites you to a BBQ, you don’t risk turning up in shorts and flip-flops.

“Cracking night in the beautiful English countryside with JD, his friends and family.”

Conservative MP Danny Kruger also attended the event.

Last month, when asked by LBC if he would be meeting the vice-president, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage replied: “We’ll have to see.”

Vance’s trip has included several official engagements, meetings and visits to cultural sites.

On Friday, he and Lammy went fishing for carp in the lake at Chevening, before taking questions from the media in the drawing room of the stately home.

Vance joked that the special relationship had been put “under strain” when his children, unlike the foreign secretary, managed to get a catch.

Over the weekend, Vance and his family enjoyed a guided tour of Hampton Court Palace, the former home of Henry VIII.

Residents in the hamlet of Dean in Oxfordshire have faced disruption, with police closing roads for the vice-president’s visit.

The village and a manor house in the area have been under heavy security since Vance’s arrival on Sunday evening.

The vice-president has been pictured at a farm shop, near Chipping Norton, close to the home of the former UK Prime Minister Lord David Cameron.

Vance’s trip comes before US President Donald Trump, who travelled to Scotland for a private visit in July, is scheduled to make a historic second state visit to the UK next month.

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Drive three hours north of Perth, and you’ll arrive in Eneabba – barren and desolate, just the odd hill in the distance.

This is Western Australia mining territory. Buried in this vast terrain is a massive pit, full of what looks like mounds of worthless dirt.

But appearances can be deceiving: this pit is home to a million-tonne stockpile containing critical minerals, better known as rare earths, which are crucial for making electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence equipment.

And Australia is betting big on this discovery with a billion dollar loan to a mining company to extract these metals – and disrupt a supply chain that China has monopolised.

Will the gamble pay off?

China’s chokehold on rare earths has hit home with US President Donald Trump’s trade wars. When Beijing restricted exports, a powerful bargaining chip in tariff negotiations, it sent manufacturers around the world into their war rooms. China, they realised with alarm, had the power to stop their factories.

Ford even halted production of its popular Explorer SUV for a week at one of its Chicago plants – a bold move while grappling with Trump’s tariffs.

A month later, CEO Jim Farley revealed the pause was triggered by a shortage of rare earths, admitting the company was still struggling to secure reliable supply. “It’s day to day,” Mr Farley told Bloomberg TV.

Beijing has since agreed to let rare earth minerals and magnets flow to the United States, which eased the bottleneck.

But without a US-China trade deal, the fear is that the disruption could return.

“The West dropped the ball – that’s the reality. And China was in for the long run. It saw the benefit and was willing to invest in it,” says Jacques Eksteen, chair for extractive metallurgy at Curtin University.

The phrase “rare earths” – referring to 17 elements on the periodic table which are lightweight, super strong and resistant to heat, making them useful in small electric motors – is something of a misnomer.

“Rare earths are not rare or scarce. Gold is scarce, but it’s not a critical material,” Professor Eksteen explains.

Rare earths are critical, however. Take the average electric vehicle – there might be rare earths-based motors in dozens of components from side mirrors and speakers to windshield wipers and breaking sensors.

The problem is therefore not amount, but the fact “somewhere in the supply chain you’ve got one or maybe a few countries controlling that bottleneck”, Professor Eksteen adds.

In the 90s, Europe and France in particular had a prominent rare earths industry. Today, almost all these minerals come from China, which has spent decades mining and refining at scale.

China now accounts for more than half of global rare earth mining, and almost 90% of processing.

The US sources 80% of its rare earth imports from China, while the European Union relies on China for about 98% of its supply.

“China has since very deliberately and overtly sought to control the market for the purposes of supporting their downstream manufacturing and defence industries,” says Dan McGrath, head of rare earths for Iluka Resources, in between driving us around the company’s vast Eneabba site.

But Mr McGrath, and Iluka, are hoping to make a dent in that control – even if it wasn’t necessarily in the company’s original plan.

For decades, Iluka has been mining zircon in Australia – a key ingredient in ceramics, and titanium dioxide used in the pigmentation of paint, plastics and paper.

It just so happens the byproducts of these mineral sands include dysprosium and terbium – some of the most sought-after rare earths.

Over the years, Iluka has built up the stockpile, and is now worth more than $650m (£440m).

This was the easy part, however. The processing or refining is another matter altogether.

“They’re chemically very similar so to try and separate them requires a huge number of stages,” Professor Eksteen explained.

“Also, you’ve got residues and wastes that you have to deal with out of this industry, and that’s problematic. They often produce radioactive materials. It comes at a cost.”

And that is one of the reasons the Australian government is loaning Iluka A$1.65bn ($1bn; £798m) to build a refinery to meet demand for rare earths which Iluka sees growing by 50-170% by the end of the decade.

“We expect to be able to supply a significant proportion of Western demand for rare earths by 2030. Our customers recognise that having an independent, secure and sustainable supply chain outside of China is fundamental for the continuity of their business,” says Mr McGrath.

“This refinery and Iluka’s commitment to the rare earth business is an alternative to China.”

But the refinery will take another two years to build and come online.

“Without the strategic partnership we have with the Australian government, a rare earths project would not be economically viable,” Mr McGrath says.

China’s recent willingness to turn supply of rare earths on and off has spurred trading partners to diversify their suppliers.

Iluka says because automakers for example plan their production years in advance, it is already fielding requests for when its refinery does come online.

Rare earths are critical to the green transition, electric vehicles, and defence technologies – making their control a pressing national priority.

“The open international market in critical minerals and rare earths is a mirage. It doesn’t exist. And the reason it doesn’t exist is because there is one supplier of these materials and they have the wherewithal to change where the market goes, whether that be in pricing or supply,” Australia’s resources minister Madeleine King says.

Canberra sees government intervention as necessary to provide an alternative supply, and help the world rely less on China.

“We can either sit back and do nothing about that… or we can step up to take on the responsibility to develop a rare earths industry here that competes with that market,” Ms King adds.

But there is something that Australia will have to contend with as it invests and works to expand a rare earths industry – pollution.

In China, environmental damage from years of processing rare earths has led to chemicals and radioactive waste seeping into waterways – cities and people bearing the scars of decades of poor regulation.

With rare earths, it’s not so much about the mining footprint, rather the processing that is a dirty business – because it involves extraction, leaching, thermal cracking and refining which produce radioactive components.

“I think there is no metal industry that is completely clean… unfortunately, it’s a matter of picking your poison sometimes,” Professor Eksteen says.

“In Australia, we’ve got mechanisms to handle that. We’ve got a legal environment and a framework to work with that to at least deal with it responsibly.”

The EU has in the past accused China of using a “quasi monopoly” on rare earths as a bargaining chip, weaponising it to undermine competitors in key industries.

The bloc – which is home to hundreds of auto manufacturers that so desperately need rare earths – said even if China has loosened restrictions on supplies, the threat of supply chain shocks remains.

Even if building a brand new industry will take time, Australia seems to have a lot going for it in the rare earths race, as it tries to be a more reliable and cleaner source.

And one that – crucially – is independent of China.

US National Guard troops have begun appearing on the streets of Washington DC, a day after President Donald Trump deployed the troops to the city and took control of its police force as he argued violent crime was out of control.

Armoured vehicles were spotted at urban centres and tourist sites around the US capital on Tuesday evening.

Officials have said that 800 National Guard troops are expected to be deployed, as well as 500 federal law enforcement agents.

Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, who has denied crime is out of control in her city, described the troop deployment as an “authoritarian push”.

Trump, a Republican, has also threatened similar deployments against New York and Chicago, two other Democratic-controlled cities.

The camouflaged troops have been trickling into the US capital since Trump’s announcement on Monday.

They have been seen erecting barricades outside several government buildings, and taking photos with tourists.

Twenty-three people were arrested by federal agents on Monday night, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. The agents are aiding local law enforcement.

She said the arrests were for homicide, gun offences, drug dealing, lewd acts, stalking, reckless driving, and other crimes.

“This is only the beginning,” said Leavitt.

“Over the course of the next month, the Trump administration will relentlessly pursue and arrest every violent criminal in the District who breaks the law, undermines public safety, and endangers law-abiding Americans.”

FBI Director Kash Patel later said FBI agents were involved in around half of those arrests.

Both the mayor of Washington and the city’s police chief said earlier in the day they shared the same goal as the federal agents.

“What I’m focused on is the federal surge and how to make the most of the federal officers that we have,” Bowser said after a meeting on Tuesday with US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith said: “We know that we have to get illegal guns off of our streets, and if we have this influx of enhanced presence, we know that it’s going to make our city even better.”

But at a town hall on Tuesday night, the mayor sharpened her criticism of Trump.

Bowser called on community members to “protect our city, to protect our autonomy, to protect our home rule and get to the other side of this guy and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push”, according to the New York Times.

It comes as a manhunt was launched for an armed assailant who killed a man on Monday night in Logan Circle, one of Washington DC’s trendiest neighbourhoods, just a mile from the White House.

It was the 100th homicide recorded in Washington DC this year, according to local media.

Police say the suspect was last seen wearing a black shirt and carrying a rifle.

The shooting prompted US Secret Service to bolster security outside the president’s home as a precaution.

According to crime figures published by Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police, violent offences peaked in 2023 and fell 35% last year to their lowest level in three decades.

But DC Police Union chairman Gregg Pemberton has disputed those figures, previously accusing the city police department of “deliberately falsifying crime data, creating a false narrative of reduced crime while communities suffer”.

FBI data has also indicated a drop in crime in Washington DC last year – a more modest decrease of 9%.

Studies suggest the capital’s homicide rate is higher than average compared with other major US cities.

The wife of South Korea’s jailed former president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has been arrested over a raft of charges, including stock manipulation and bribery.

Former first lady Kim Keon Hee denied all charges during a four-hour court hearing in Seoul on Tuesday. But the court issued a detention warrant, citing the risk that she may destroy evidence.

South Korea has a history of former presidents being indicted and imprisoned. However, this is the first time both the former president and former first lady have been jailed.

Yoon was detained in January to face trial over a failed martial law bid last year that plunged the country into chaos and eventually led to his ouster.

Prosecutors say Kim, 52, made over 800 million won ($577,940; £428,000) by participating in a price-rigging scheme involving the stocks of Deutsch Motors, a BMW dealer in South Korea.

While this allegedly happened before her husband was elected the country’s leader, it continued to cast a shadow throughout his presidency.

She allegedly also accepted two Chanel bags and a diamond necklace as bribes from the controversial Unification Church in exchange for business favours.

Among other charges, Kim is also accused of meddling in candidate nominations during the parliamentary by-elections in 2022 and the general elections last year.

Kim appeared solemn as she attended Tuesday’s hearing wearing a black suit and a black skirt.

“I sincerely apologise for causing trouble despite being a person of no importance,” she told reporters.

While he was president, Yoon vetoed three opposition-led bills that sought a special counsel investigation into allegations against Kim.

He issued the last veto in November, a week before he declared martial law.

A special counsel was set up in June this year after Yoon’s rival Lee Jae Myung became president.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine would reject any Russian proposal to give up the Donbas region in exchange for a ceasefire, warning it could be used as a springboard for future attacks.

Zelensky was speaking ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

Trump has said any peace deal would involve “some swapping of territories” and it is believed one of Putin’s demands is that Kyiv surrenders the parts of the Donbas it still controls.

Meanwhile Russia’s troops have continued their summer offensive, making a sudden thrust near the eastern town of Dobropillia and advancing 10km (six miles) in a short period of time.

Zelensky admitted the advance had taken place in “several spots” but said Kyiv would soon destroy the units involved in the attack.

While downplaying Russia’s advance, he added it was “clear to us” that Moscow’s objective was to create a “certain information space” before Putin meets Trump that “Russia is moving forward, advancing, while Ukraine is losing”.

No official details have emerged on what demands Vladimir Putin could make when he meets Donald Trump in Anchorage on Friday.

The Donbas – made up of the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk – has been partly occupied by Russia since 2014.

Moscow now holds almost all of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk but speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Zelensky reaffirmed that Ukraine would reject any proposal to leave the Donbas.

• Ukraine’s borders must not be changed by force, EU leaders say
• Why Trump and Putin are meeting in Alaska
• Why did Putin’s Russia invade Ukraine?

“If we withdraw from the Donbas today – our fortifications, our terrain, the heights we control – we will clearly open a bridgehead for the Russians to prepare an offensive,” he said.

Zelensky has previously insisted that Ukrainians would not “gift their land to the occupier”, and pointed to the country’s constitution, which requires a referendum before a change in its territory.

In his nightly address on Tuesday, Zelensky also said Moscow was preparing new offensives on three parts of the front – Zaporizhzhia, Pokrovsk and Novopavlov areas.

Last week Trump said there would be “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Russia and Ukraine – sparking concern in Kyiv and across Europe that Moscow could be allowed to redraw Ukraine’s borders by force.

Russia currently controls just under 20% of Ukrainian territory.

The White House on Tuesday said the Alaska talks would be a “listening exercise” for Trump and added having him and Putin sit down in the same room would give the US president “the best indication on how to end this war”.

It follows Trump describing the summit as a “feel-out meeting” on Monday, seeming to tone down expectations that Friday’s meeting could bring Ukraine and Russia closer to peace.

When he announced the summit last week, Trump sounded positive that the meeting could result in concrete steps towards peace.

“I think my gut instinct really tells me that we have a shot at it,” he said.

But Ukrainian President Zelensky once again expressed serious doubts that the talks could result in a positive outcome for Kyiv, which has been excluded from the summit. “I don’t know what they will talk about without us,” he said.

Zelensky has steered clear of criticising Trump but in recent days his frustration at being sidelined has become apparent, and on Tuesday he said the choice of Alaska as a location was a “personal victory” for Putin.

“He is coming out of isolation, because they are meeting with him on US territory,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader has previously said any agreements without Kyiv’s involvement would amount to “dead decisions”.

On Wednesday, Zelensky is due to join a virtual meeting with Donald Trump, EU leaders, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Nato chief Mark Rutte.

All sides will try to convince Trump of the need not to be swayed by Putin when the two meet at the hastily organised summit.

Artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Perplexity has made a surprise $34.5bn (£25.6bn) takeover bid for Google’s Chrome internet browser.

Moving Chrome to an independent operator committed to user safety would benefit the public, Perplexity said in a letter to Sundar Pichai, the boss of Google’s owner Alphabet.

But one technology industry investor called the offer a “stunt” that is a much lower than Chrome’s true value and highlighted that it is not clear whether the platform would is even for sale.

The BBC has contacted Google for comment. The firm has not announced any plans to sell Chrome – the world’s most popular web browser with an estimated three billion-plus users.

Google’s dominance of the search engine and online advertising market has come under intense scrutiny, with the technology giant embroiled in years of legal wrangling as part of two antitrust cases.

A US federal judge is expected to issue a ruling this month that could see Google being ordered to break up its search business.

The company has said it would appeal such a ruling, saying the idea of spinning off Chrome was an “unprecedented proposal” that would harm consumers and security.

A spokesman for Perplexity told the BBC that its bid marks an “important commitment to the open web, user choice, and continuity for everyone who has chosen Chrome.”

As part of the proposed takeover, Perplexity said it would continue to have Google as the default search engine within Chrome, though users could adjust their settings.

The firm said it would also maintain and support Chromium, a widely-used open-source platform that supports Chrome and other browsers including Microsoft Edge and Opera.

Perplexity did not respond to queries about how the proposed deal would be funded. In July, it had an estimated value of $18bn.

Technology industry investor and start-up founder Heath Ahrens called Perplexity’s move a “stunt, and nowhere near Chrome’s true value, given its unmatched data and reach.”

“The offer isn’t serious, but if someone like Sam Altman or Elon Musk tripled it, they could genuinely secure dominance for their AI,” he added.

It is also not clear whether Google is considering selling the platform, Tomasz Tunguz from Theory Ventures told the BBC.

He also said the offer is a lot lower than the browser is worth “given the value of Chrome is likely significantly higher – maybe ten times more valuable than the bid or more.”

Perplexity’s app is among the rising players in the generative AI race, alongside more well-known platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

Last month, it launched an AI-powered browser called Comet.

The company made headlines earlier this year after offering to buy the American version of TikTok, which faces a deadline in September to be sold by its Chinese owner or be banned in the US.

Perplexity has reportedly drawn interest from technology giants including Apple and Facebook-owner Meta.

A standout feature of the India-UK free trade agreement signed last month was the Narendra Modi government’s decision to open India’s vast government procurement market to UK suppliers.

This typically includes a range of things the government buys – from goods and services to contracts for public works such as roads.

Some 40,000 high-value tenders worth £38bn from federal ministries will now be open to bidding for UK businesses in strategic sectors like transport, green energy and infrastructure – areas which have thus far been heavily protected from foreign competition.

The access is unprecedented, trade experts say.

It is “far greater” than what India had offered in its earlier agreement with the United Arab Emirates and “sets a new benchmark”, Ajay Srivastava of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think-tank, told the BBC.

Under the agreement, UK firms bidding for Indian government contracts in specified areas will be treated almost on par with Indian suppliers and also have real-time access to information on forthcoming public tenders and procurement opportunities.

Also, goods from the UK made with just 20% domestic input can now be supplied to the Indian government, allowing UK companies the flexibility to source up to 80% of the parts or raw material from other countries and still qualify for procurement preference in India.

The minimum contract value at which these firms can bid for government projects has also been sharply reduced as a result of which “UK companies can now bid on a wide range of lower-value projects – such as rural roads, solar equipment for schools, or IT systems for government offices – that were previously out of reach”, said Mr Srivastava.

But for British companies, realising this opportunity on the ground will be easier said than done, several experts told the BBC.

While UK suppliers are eligible to participate as Class-II local suppliers, Indian companies will continue to get preferential treatment as Class-I suppliers, says Dr Arpita Mukherjee, a trade expert with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

Moreover, pricing plays a key role in winning contracts, and “UK companies tend to have higher prices” compared with Indian companies, which will be a major challenge for them, she adds.

A more significant deterrent will be delayed payments and difficult contract enforcement, which are “major legacy issues when it comes to public procurement in India”, says Srijan Shukla of the Observer Research Foundation think-tank.

He says a study on procurement by India’s central public sector enterprises from 2017 to 2020 found that pending payments to suppliers were often more than the total average procurement in a year.

“This will impact UK players trying to enter India’s public procurement markets, especially when it comes to public contracts that have long-time horizons and are subject to regulatory and political uncertainties,” Mr Shukla told the BBC.

Pending dues have been a major irritant for India’s small businesses too, leading to short-term liquidity issues that often “force them out of these procurement markets and reallocate that business to the big players”, according to Mr Shukla.

Much of this is reflected in India’s poor ranking – 163 out of 190 – on contract enforcement in the World Bank’s Doing Business report, the latest round of which was in 2020.

While things have improved since these rankings were published – with one-stop-shop portals like Government e-Marketplace, the Central Public Procurement Portal or the recently launched online dispute resolution portal bringing more transparency to the public tendering process – payment discipline by government entities continues to remain a challenge, says Mr Shukla.

According to Ms Mukherjee, the India-UK trade agreement emphasises transparency in procurement but omits issues like pending dues, contract enforcement and penalties.

She adds the deal excludes the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement’s dispute settlement provisions for four years after the CETA takes effect – these provisions usually define how disputes are resolved.

“Doing business in India is an acquired skill. Over time, companies from the UK will have to learn the way to work around complexities regarding the art of winning public tenders and navigating though complex regulations,” Mr Shukla says.

Despite the niggling issues, allowing foreign players entry into India’s government procurement market marks a far-reaching policy shift.

It shows the Indian government’s intentions to open up a space that has long been reserved for local small and medium enterprises, and could be reflective of the concessions Delhi is willing to give foreign players in future trade agreements like the one being negotiated with the US, according to GTRI.

India is late to including deep government procurement clauses in trade deals, making its current efforts a catch-up game, says Mr Shukla.

It is also a sign, he says, of the Indian government’s “confidence that its own firms can compete with global firms both externally and at home”.

The hope is that more foreign players will force more accountability from the Indian government and “help standardise” its tendering and public procurement process – marked by payment delays and poor contract enforcement – to global standards.

The number of people surviving cancer has improved hugely in the past 50 years, but experts warn progress has been uneven with some of the cancers with the worst survival rates falling further behind.

For some, including melanoma skin cancer, 10-year survival is now above 90%, while for all cancers, half of patients can expect to live that long – double the figure in the early 1970s.

But a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said there had been little improvement in those affecting the oesophagus, stomach and lungs – and less than 5% survive pancreatic cancer for 10 years.

The government said it was committed to making more progress with a new strategy due soon.

The researchers said advances in treatment and earlier detection were behind the improvements in survival seen for many cancers.

Breast cancer is a perfect example of this, with 10-year survival rates rising from 42% to more than 76% between 1971 and 2018 in England and Wales.

The period saw the introduction of an NHS breast screening programme, plus targeted therapies for different types of breast cancer.

In comparison, the cancers with the lowest survival rates tend to be the hardest to detect and have the fewest treatment options.

Alongside pancreatic cancer, the study says these include oesophagus, stomach and lung cancers, which all still have 10-year survival rates below 20%, after only a small amount of progress since the 1970s.

This has meant the gap between the cancers with the best and worst survival rates has nearly doubled.

Matt Black is someone with first-hand experience of how the type of cancer you get makes a huge difference.

In 2019 the 60-year-old lost his sister, Harriette, to pancreatic cancer, 20 years after his father-in-law died of oesophageal cancer.

Five years ago he was diagnosed with bowel cancer which has above average survival rates. Soon after developing symptoms he had surgery and was given the all-clear.

“NHS staff do an amazing job, but it’s such a difficult time to be a cancer patient, especially for those with cancers which aren’t easy to spot or treat.

“It’s so important that there is more research and support for cancer services here, so that more people can be as fortunate as me,” says Matt.

The researchers also warned that, while overall survival was still improving, the rate of progress had slowed during the 2010s. Longer waits for diagnosis and treatment are thought to be partly to blame.

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, which funded the study, said: “Thanks to research, most patients today are far more likely to survive cancer than at any other point in the past.

“But the reality is that this progress is slowing – and for some cancers it never got going in the first place.”

The charity wants the government’s forthcoming strategy to focus on:

• cutting waiting times
• early detection, including full introduction of a lung cancer screening programme
• investment in research, particularly targeting the most deadly cancers

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said cancer care was a priority. with some progress already made on waiting times.

“The national cancer plan will set out how we will improve survival rates further and address the unacceptable variation between different cancer types,” he added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have changed their names to protect them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaza City has come under intense air attack, the territory’s Hamas-run civil defence agency has said, as Israeli forces prepare to occupy the city.

Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman, said the residential areas of Zeitoun and Sabra had for three days been hit by bombs and drone strikes that “cause massive destruction to civilian homes”, with residents unable to recover the dead and injured.

Meanwhile the UK, EU, Australia, Canada and Japan issued a statement saying “famine is unfolding in front of our eyes” and urged action to “reverse starvation”.

They demanded “immediate, permanent and concrete steps” to facilitate the entry of aid to Gaza. Israel denies there is starvation in Gaza.

It has accused UN agencies of not picking up aid at the borders and delivering it.

The joint statement also demanded an end to the use of lethal force near aid distribution sites and lorry convoys, where the UN says more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed, mostly by the Israeli military.

Separately, the World Health Organisation on Tuesday appealed to Israel to let it stock medical supplies to deal with a “catastrophic” health situation before it seizes control of Gaza City.

“We all hear about ‘more humanitarian supplies are allowed in’ – well it’s not happening yet, or it’s happening at a way too low a pace,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the agency’s representative in the Palestinian territories.

“We want to as quickly stock up hospitals,” he added. “We currently cannot do that. We need to be able to get all essential medicines and medical supplies in.”

Israel’s war cabinet voted on Monday to occupy Gaza City, a move condemned at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council later that day. On Tuesday the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was “at the beginning of a new state of combat”.

The Israeli government has not provided an exact timetable on when its forces would enter the area. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s forces had been instructed to dismantle the “two remaining Hamas strongholds” in Gaza City and a central area around al-Mawasi.

He also outlined a three-step plan to increase aid in Gaza, including designating safe corridors for aid distribution, as well as more air drops by Israeli forces and other partners.

On the ground, however, residents of Gaza City said they had come under unrelenting attack from the air. Majed al-Hosary, a resident in Zeitoun in Gaza City, told AFP that the attacks had been “extremely intense for two days”.

“With every strike, the ground shakes. There are martyrs under the rubble that no one can reach because the shelling hasn’t stopped,” he said.

“It sounded like the war was restarting,” Amr Salah, 25, told Reuters. “Tanks fired shells at houses, and several houses were hit, and the planes carried out what we call fire rings, whereby several missiles landed on some roads in eastern Gaza.”

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said that 100 dead had been brought to hospitals across Gaza over the past 24 hours, including 31 people who were killed at aid sites. Five more people had also died of malnutrition, it added.

Israel has faced mounting criticism over the 22-month-long war with Hamas, with UN-backed experts warning of widespread famine unfolding in the besieged territory.

On Tuesday members of an international group of former leaders known as “The Elders” for the first time called the war in Gaza an “unfolding genocide” and blamed Israel for causing famine among its population.

Following a visit to the Gaza border, Helen Clark and Mary Robinson, a former prime minister of New Zealand and a former president of Ireland, said in a joint statement: “What we saw and heard underlines our personal conviction that there is not only an unfolding, human-caused famine in Gaza. There is an unfolding genocide.”

The statement mirrors those of leading Israeli rights groups, including B’Tselem, which said it had reached an “unequivocal conclusion” that Israel was attempting to “destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”.

Israel strongly rejects the accusations, saying its forces target terrorists and never civilians, and that Hamas was responsible for the suffering in Gaza.

On Sunday, the IDF killed five Al Jazeera journalists in a targeted attack on a media tent in Gaza City, sparking widespread international condemnation. It said it had killed well known reporter Anas al-Sharif, whom it alleged “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”, and made no mention of the others.

Media freedom groups said it had provided little evidence for its claims. Al Jazeera’s managing editor said Israel wanted to “silence the coverage of any channel of reporting from inside Gaza”.

Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in its attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Israel’s response in Gaza has killed at least 61,599 Palestinians, according to the health ministry, whose toll the UN considers reliable.

At least three people have died in a scorching heatwave that is fuelling dozens of wildfires across parts of southern Europe, forcing thousands of people from their homes.

Red heat alerts have been issued in parts of Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and the Balkans, warning of significant risks to health as temperatures push above 40C (104F).

Spain’s weather service Aemet said temperatures could reach 44C (111.2F) in Seville and Cordoba, while southern Portugal could also hit 44C.

In Spain, an equestrian centre employee died after suffering severe burns in Tres Cantos, near Madrid, where winds over 70km/h (43mph) drove flames near homes, forcing hundreds to flee.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday that rescue services “are working tirelessly to extinguish the fires”.

“We are at extreme risk of forest fires. Please be very cautious,” he added in a post on X.

In Spain’s north-western region of Castile and Leon, almost 4,000 people were evacuated and more than 30 blazes were reported – with one threatening the Unesco-listed Las Médulas, renowned for its ancient gold mines.

Another 2,000 people were evacuated from hotels and homes near the tourist hotspot of Tarifa in the southern region of Andalusia.

Almost 1,000 soldiers were deployed to battle wildfires around the country, Spain’s national military emergency unit said on Tuesday morning.

In neighbouring Portugal, firefighters battled three large wildfires, with the most serious near Trancoso contained in the centre of the country on Tuesday.

More than 1,300 firefighters and 14 aircraft were deployed, with Morocco sending two planes after Portuguese water bombers broke down, Reuters reported. Authorities warned southern regions could hit 44C, with the temperature not expected to dip below 25C.

One child died of heatstroke in Italy on Monday, where temperatures of 40C are expected to hit later this week. Red heat alerts were in place for at least 10 Italian cities, including Rome, Milan and Florence.

A four-year-old Romanian boy, who was found unconscious in a car in Sardinia was airlifted to a hospital in Rome but died due to irreversible brain damage, reportedly caused by heatstroke, medical authorities told AFP.

Almost three-quarters of France is under heat alerts, with temperatures forecast to top 36C in the Paris region and 40C in the Rhône Valley.

French Health Minister Catherine Vautrin said hospitals were braced for fallout from the country’s second heatwave in just a few weeks.

Greece is battling more than 150 wildfires across the country, exacerbated by fierce winds, with nearly 5,000 firefighters and dozens of aircraft tackling the blazes.

Mass evacuations are under way on touristic island Zakynthos and in western Achaia, where blazes have destroyed homes, vehicles and businesses.

Grigoris Alexopoulos, the mayor of western Achaia, said the fires in the region were “out of control”, adding some coastal areas have been “irreparably damaged”.

Rescue boats have been evacuating beachgoers trapped by advancing flames on Chios and authorities have requested several EU firefighting aircraft.

Greek authorities are warning the conditions could become even more challenging in the coming days.

Turkey has brought several major fires under control, including in Canakkale and Izmir, after hundreds were evacuated and the Dardanelles Strait and Canakkale airport were closed.

In Montenegro, a soldier died and another was injured when their water tanker overturned while fighting fires near the capital Podgorica.

Wildfires in Albania forced people to evacuate their homes on Monday, while in Croatia a large fire raged in Split and was contained on Tuesday.

Parts of the UK are sweltering in its fourth heatwave of the year, with temperatures hitting 33C and amber and yellow heat health alerts in place for all of England.

Two grassfires broke out in the capital on Tuesday, one in Ealing and another in Wanstead Flats, burning more than 17 acres combined.

Scientists warn global warming is making Mediterranean summers hotter and drier, fuelling longer and more intense fire seasons.