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 cities controlled by Democrats.

He has said crime is on the rise in the cities including in Washington DC, although analysis by BBC Verify suggests a different trend in DC.

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

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

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

• Is crime in Washington DC ‘out of control’, as Trump claims?

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.

Despite crime figures showing a decrease in violent offences, DC Police Union chairman Gregg Pemberton has said the city police department is “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.

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.

A political row has erupted in India over allegations of “vote theft”, with opposition parties accusing the country’s election body of irregularities, which they say favoured the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 general elections.

On Tuesday, parliament was adjourned after opposition MPs demanded a debate on the integrity of India’s electoral process.

A day earlier, dozens of opposition leaders, including Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, were briefly detained by the police in the capital Delhi, as they tried to march to the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) headquarters.

Gandhi first raised the issue at a 7 August press conference in Delhi, and has since managed to galvanise strong support from hundreds of opposition lawmakers.

The Election Commission and the BJP have aggressively rejected the allegations.

Gandhi has alleged widespread voter manipulation during the 2024 parliamentary elections, citing granular data obtained from the electoral body itself – though the ECI and the ruling party dispute his interpretation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi secured a historic third term in the elections, but his BJP-led alliance fell short of the sweeping majority predicted. Voter turnout averaged 66% in the world’s largest election, with nearly a billion registered voters – one in eight people on Earth.

Gandhi cited electoral data for Mahadevapura, a part of the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency, and claimed that the voter list had more than 100,000 manipulated entries, including duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and bulk registrations of votes at single locations.

He presented examples of voters like Shakun Rani, who he claimed cast her ballots twice – a claim disputed by the election body.

Gandhi also alleged CCTV footage from polling booths was deleted and pointed out an instance of 80 people registered in a single address in Mahadevapura.

The Congress leader says his party lost at least 48 seats in the elections due to such irregularities and has accused India’s election body of failing to enforce the “one man, one vote” principle. The Congress won 99 of the 543 seats in the elections, behind BJP’s 240.

Gandhi has demanded that the ECI release digital voter rolls, so that they can be audited by his party and the public.

The BBC hasn’t independently verified Gandhi’s claims.

Soon after Gandhi’s press conference, ECI responded on social media platform X, calling his allegations “absurd” and denying many of his claims.

The polling body has demanded that he either submit a signed declaration under oath or apologise to the nation.

ECI’s Karnataka state unit further said that the Congress didn’t file formal objections when the electoral roll was being revised ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.

The poll body earlier said it keeps CCTV footage only for 45 days after results – the window for filing election disputes.

BJP leaders have also strongly rebutted the allegations.

“This anarchy is extremely worrying and dangerous for democracy,” BJP leader and federal education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.

Federal agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said Gandhi and the opposition alliance were “defaming democracy, tearing it to shreds, and tampering with the dignity of constitutional institutions”.

Gandhi’s allegations have led to an uproar as they come in the backdrop of a controversy over a month-long revision of electoral rolls in Bihar state, where key elections are scheduled for November.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), held between June and July, saw officials visit all 78.9 million voters in the state for verification – the first update since 2003.

The ECI says the drive targets duplicate and deceased voters, but critics say its haste has disenfranchised many, especially migrants and minorities.

Many voters in Bihar have told the BBC that the draft rolls have wrong photos and include dead people.

India’s Supreme Court is currently hearing a batch of petitions challenging the SIR, with petitioners demanding publication of the deleted names – about 6.5 million – with reasons for their removal.

The election body says deletions include 2.2 million dead, 700,000 enrolled more than once and 3.6 million who have migrated from the state.

Corrections are open until 1 September, with over 165,000 applications received. A similar review will be conducted nationwide to verify nearly a billion voters.

The court has said that the allegations of disenfranchisement “largely appears to be a case of trust deficit, nothing else” and that it would “step in immediately” if mass exclusion of voters is proven.

On 12 August, Gandhi escalated his claims of vote theft, saying such manipulation was happening “at a national level and systematically”.

Highlighting the case of a 124-year-old voter’s name found in the draft electoral list of Bihar he said: “There are unlimited cases like that. ‘Abhi picture baki hai’ [the story is not over yet].”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that Gaza ceasefire efforts are now focused on a comprehensive deal to release all the remaining hostages at once.

The plan previously being pushed was for an initial 60-day truce and partial release of living hostages.

Hamas says a delegation of its leaders is in Cairo for “preliminary talks” with Egyptian officials.

Reports say that mediators see a window of opportunity in the coming weeks to try to push a deal through.

After indirect talks between Israel and Hamas broke down last month, Israel announced a controversial plan to widen its military offensive and conquer all the Gaza Strip – including the areas where most of its two million Palestinian residents have sought refuge.

However, Israeli media do not expect the new operation to begin until October – allowing time for military preparations, including a mass call-up of reservists.

In the meantime, witnesses say that Israel has stepped up its attacks on Gaza City with intense air strikes in the past day, destroying homes.

Early on Wednesday, al-Shifa Hospital said seven members of one family, five of them children, were killed when tents were targeted in Tel al-Hawa. Al-Ahli Hospital said 10 people were killed in a strike on a house in the Zaytoun area.

The Israeli military chief Lt Gen Eyal Zamir also “approved the main framework for the IDF’s operational plan in the Gaza Strip”, a statement released by the army said.

In an interview with the i24 Israeli TV Channel shown on Tuesday, Netanyahu was asked if a partial ceasefire was still possible.

“I think it’s behind us,” he replied. “We tried, we made all kinds of attempts, we went through a lot, but it turned out that they were just misleading us.”

“I want all of them,” he said of the hostages. “The release of all the hostages, both alive and dead – that’s the stage we’re at.”

Palestinian armed groups still hold 50 hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023 that triggered the war. Israel believes that around 20 of them are still alive.

Netanyahu is under mounting domestic pressure to secure their release as well as over his plans to expand the war.

Last week, unnamed Arab officials were quoted as saying that regional mediators, Egypt and Qatar, were preparing a new framework for a deal that would involve releasing all remaining hostages at the same time in return for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

However, this will be difficult to do in a short time frame as Israel is demanding that Hamas give up control of Gaza as well as its weapons.

This is likely to be why, at a news conference on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told journalists that Cairo was still “making great efforts” with Qatar and the US – the other mediators – to revive the earlier phased plan.

“The main goal is to return to the original proposal – a 60-day ceasefire – along with the release of some hostages and some Palestinian prisoners, and the flow of humanitarian and medical aid into Gaza without obstacles or conditions,” Abdelatty said.

The Israeli prime minister says Israel’s goals have not changed. He says that the war will end only when all hostages are returned and Hamas surrenders.

Netanyahu has said that, ultimately, Israel must keep open-ended security control over Gaza.

Hamas has long called for a comprehensive deal to exchange the hostages it is holding for Palestinian prisoners in Israel jails. It also wants a full pull-out of Israeli forces and an end to the war.

It refuses to disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is created.

Speaking to i24, Netanyahu also reiterated an idea that Palestinians should simply leave the territory through “voluntary” emigration, saying: “They’re not being pushed out, they’ll be allowed to exit.”

He went on: “All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us.”

Palestinians, human rights groups and many in the international community have warned that any forced displacement of people from Gaza violates international law.

Many Palestinians fear a repeat of what they call the “Nakba” (Catastrophe) when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced from their homes in the fighting that came before and after the state of Israel was created in 1948.

Most Gazans are descendants of those original refugees and themselves hold official refugee status.

UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in Gaza, where Israel has greatly limited the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in.

The UN’s World Food Programme has warned that starvation and malnutrition are at the highest levels in Gaza since the conflict began.

Hamas’s 2023 attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel, with 251 taken into Gaza as hostages.

Israel’s offensive has since killed at least 61,722 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. It says that 235 people including 106 children have also died due to starvation and malnutrition.

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 windscreen wipers and braking 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.

Firefighters are battling several wildfires in Greece as a scorching heatwave wreaks havoc across southern Europe.

In the past 24 hours alone, more than 152 new fires have broken out across Greece – and thousands of people have been evacuated. Around 4,850 firefighters are engaged in a multi-front battle to contain the flames.

At least three people have died in Spain, Albania and Turkey, with dozens more, inlcuding firefighters, taken to hospiitals with smoke inhalation and burns.

Temperatures surpassed 40C in several locations earlier this week, with record temperatures hitting France and Slovenia.

In Greece, thousands of people have been evacuated from the tourist islands of Chios and Zakynthos.

In the western Peloponnese, flames swept into the city of Patras overnight, destroying homes, businesses and vehicles.

On Zante, three separate fire fronts spanning more than 15km (9 miles) remain uncontained. Damage has been reported to homes, tourist facilities and farmland.

At least 13 firefighters have been treated for burns and other injuries, fire brigade spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said on Wednesday, warning the conditions could become even more challenging in the coming days.

“Today, it will be another very difficult day, as the wildfire risk for most of the country’s regions will be very high,” Vathrakogiannis said.

Rescue boats have been evacuating beachgoers trapped by advancing flames on Chios and authorities have requested firefighting aircraft from other European Union countries.

In Spain, more than 4,000 people were evacuated overnight in the north-western province of León. A volunteer firefigher died in the same area.

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

The Spanish government has raised its national emergency response level.

“We are at extreme risk of forest fires. Please be very cautious,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.

Elsewhere in Europe, heat alerts remain in place in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Balkans, with temperatures expected to soar above 40C (104F) in some regions.

Slovenia reported its warmest ever night, with temperatures in one port not dropping below 28C.

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.

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

In Montenegro, a soldier died and another was seriously injured when their water tanker overturned while battling flames n the hills north of the capital, Podgorica.

In Portugal, firefighters battled three large wildfires, including a large blaze in Trancoso in the centre of the country.

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.

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.

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.

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, police arrested Ross Judd, 34, at a train station about 7km from the scene. He appeared in court on Wednesday, charged with two counts of murder.

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”.

During Wednesday’s hearing at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, prosecutors requested another 10 weeks to prepare their brief of evidence – which was granted – due to the complexity of the case and delays in the autopsies of the victims.

Judd’s lawyer also asked that her client be assessed by a prison nurse to follow up on his medication.

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.

The case was adjourned to January next year, and Judd was remanded in custody.

The UK, France and Germany have told the UN they are ready to reimpose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme if it fails to resume talks by the end of August.

The three countries, known as the E3, said they were prepared to trigger a “snapback” mechanism – meaning previous sanctions would be reinstated – unless Iran resumes negotiations.

The E3 said they had offered to extend a deadline for negotiations to the end of August, which they said Iran has not replied to.

Iranian lawmaker Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran’s parliament was ready to withdraw from a nuclear deal which restricted its nuclear programme if new sanctions were put in place, the Iranian Defa Press news agency reported.

The E3’s letter comes after initial talks between their delegations and Iranian diplomats took place in Istanbul, Turkey last month.

In the letter to the UN and its chief António Guterres, three foreign ministers – Jean-Noël Barrot from France, David Lammy from the UK and Johann Wadephul from Germany – said they would enforce severe sanctions on Iran unless it agrees to limit its nuclear programme.

The E3 said their offer of an extension to the negotiations “remained unanswered by Iran”.

“We have made it clear that if Iran is not willing to reach a diplomatic solution before the end of August 2025, or does not seize the opportunity of an extension, the E3 are prepared to trigger the snapback mechanism,” the letter said.

They added they were committed to using “all diplomatic tools” to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon – something Iran has denied intending to do.

Last month, Iran said it was prepared for further talks but only once sanctions already in place were lifted and its right to a civilian nuclear programme was agreed.

Sanctions on Iran’s nuclear programme were previously lifted in 2015 after Iran signed a nuclear deal with the E3, the US, Russia and China, agreeing limits on its nuclear operations and to allow international inspectors entry to its nuclear sites. The deal is due to expire in October.

The US withdrew from the deal in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term, with the leader saying it did too little to stop Iran from creating a pathway to a nuclear bomb.

With its withdrawal, all US sanctions were re-imposed on Iran.

Iran retaliated by increasingly breaching the restrictions. In May, the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it had more than 400kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity – well above the level used for civilian purposes and close to weapons grade.

In June Iran’s parliament suspended cooperation with the IAEA after tensions with Israel and the US came to a head.

Israel launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities the same month, triggering a 12-day war.

The US bombed a number of Iran’s nuclear sites, bringing US-Iran talks to an abrupt end.

Following the strikes, the E3 countries stepped up warnings to Iran about its suspension of cooperation with the IAEA.

The BBC has contacted the UK Foreign Office for comment.

The Iranian mission to the UN did not immediately respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

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

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

A gleaming white Vivaro van drove slowly off the production line at Vauxhall’s factory in Luton, beeping its horn, while workers cheered and crowded around taking photographs.

Behind it, the production line came to a halt – forever.

The Luton plant began building cars in 1905. It kept operating for the next 120 years, taking time out to build tanks and aircraft engines during World War Two. But on 28 March, that came to an end.

The factory shut down, a victim of cutbacks at Vauxhall’s parent company, Stellantis.

Justin Nicholls, a production shift manager, was one of the 1,100 workers there – he had worked at the plant for 38 years. “It was devastating, because it came out of the blue”, he says. “It was a complete surprise.”

It followed the closure of Honda’s car factory in Swindon in 2021, and Ford’s engine plant in Bridgend the year before.

Together, they have come to symbolise an apparent long-term decline in the UK motor industry.

In all, just 417,000 new cars and vans were built in the UK in the first six months of 2025, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) – the lowest for that period since 1953.

Output for the year is expected to be around 755,000 vehicles — lower even than during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The SMMT’s chief executive, Mike Hawes, described the situation as “depressing”.

The sector contributes some £22bn a year to the economy, according to the SMMT, and as recently as 2023 automotive manufacturing employed some 198,000 people in the UK.

Andy Palmer, who was previously chief executive of Aston Martin, believes the ecosystem – and the sum it contributes to the economy – can only survive if the industry maintains its current scale.

“There is a critical mass of employment,” he explains. “Once you go below that, you see it all fall apart.

“You don’t have the university courses, you don’t have people coming across from the aero industry, you don’t have the pipeline of skilled engineers that allow the luxury firms to exist, and so on.”

And the knock-on effect of this could affect regions already facing challenges.

“If we think about parts of the UK that have automotive plants, they’re often disadvantaged regions,” says David Bailey, professor of business economics at Birmingham Business School.

“Losing these good quality jobs would have a big impact in terms of wages for workers and also a knock-on effect in terms of the multiplier on the local economy.”

He is concerned about what has already been lost. “I’d argue that actually we’ve let too much of this go already. I think once it’s gone, it’s really gone.”

The question is, can the industry recover – or is it too late?

The UK car industry is sprawling. Alongside large factories run by the likes of JLR, Nissan, BMW MINI and Toyota, there is a network of suppliers and high-tech specialist engineering firms, along with a number of smaller, luxury car firms, such as Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls-Royce and McLaren, plus bus and truck manufacturers.

In 2016, the UK produced 1.82m new vehicles – more than at any point since 1999. Yet even at that point, storm clouds were already gathering. And the industry has suffered further over the past decade.

Factory closures have had an impact, but other factors have been at play as well, including uncertainty over US trade policy, which has hit exports to a major market.

Then there was the role of Brexit.

“Obviously, Brexit had a big impact”, says Santiago Arieu, senior autos research analyst at Fitch Solutions. “It created uncertainty and complicated future visibility.”

As a result, experts say new investment suffered – just as the industry was gearing up for the massive changes being brought by the transition to electric vehicles.

The agreement with the EU to guarantee continued tariff-free trade soothed the industry’s concerns when it came. But by then, there was another challenge to contend with.

The pandemic caused havoc within the industry globally.

In 2020, output dropped by nearly a third, hitting levels not seen since the mid-1980s. It also threw finely tuned global supply chains out of kilter and created shortages of vital parts.

Although demand for new cars was spiking, manufacturers simply couldn’t build them quickly enough.

All of this caused short-term disruption – but the impact concealed a deeper, structural problem for the UK industry.

Quite simply, it has become an expensive place to build cars.

Part of this is to do with labour costs. Although lower than in some other Western European countries, particularly Germany, they are around twice the level seen in Central European nations such as Poland, Slovakia and Hungary.

Then, there are energy costs. British manufacturers currently pay some of the highest electricity prices in the world.

“Car makers operating in the UK also have factories in Europe and elsewhere, so it’s not hard for them to find a replacement for their UK production,” explains Felipe Munoz of JATO Dynamics.

The former chief executive of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, has previously criticised the cost of manufacturing cars in the UK and northern Europe – while holding up the company’s Kenitra factory in Morocco as a model of efficiency.

When the Luton plant shut last year, it was estimated by Luton Borough Council that the move could cost the regional economy £300m per year.

A small part of the workforce relocated to Stellantis’ other UK plant, at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, where the company is in the process of investing £50m in expanding production.

Of those who have not relocated, some retired. “[Others] are taking quite a reduction in pay”, says Gary Reay, who was a representative of the Unite union at the plant.

The factory site has been bought by a property firm, Goodman – it plans to create more than 1,700 jobs at a new industrial park.

Mr Reay is unimpressed. “The problem for the workforce… is this is years down the road… It’s too far away for most of our workers.”

Yet there is hope in some quarters: it is possible this year’s output may turn out to be a low point, as recent investments start to bear fruit.

In 2024, for example, Nissan stopped building its ageing electric Leaf model at its Sunderland plant — having previously been building about 30,000 a year. But it is due to begin making a new version this year and will start building an electric version of the Juke in 2026.

Nissan is also one of the manufacturers set to benefit from investments in gigafactories. Nissan’s battery partner AESC is building one in Sunderland, which will be able to make power packs for 100,000 electric vehicles a year.

JLR’s parent company, Tata, meanwhile, is investing in its own plant in Somerset, through its subsidiary Agratas.

The government says it wants to increase the number of cars and commercial vehicles built annually to 1.3m by 2035. The SMMT believes 803,000 vehicles will leave the production lines next year but bringing that up to 1.3m looks like a very tall order, according to Mike Hawes.

Greg McDonald, the CEO of Goodfish Group, is also circumspect. “I don’t think many people think there’s going to be a resurgence,” he says.

His business makes injection moulded components for carmakers and has four sites across the UK. It also has a base in Slovakia.

“Suppliers like us are used to being constantly bid at for price and cost reductions, and there’s a limit to how much you can do.”

One way of mitigating this is for businesses to diversify – something more viable for smaller businesses in the sector.

Burnett’s Manufacturing, based in Northampton, is one of many automotive suppliers clustered around the Midlands Corridor. A manufacturer of specialist rubber and plastic parts, it relies on the motor industry for about 40% of its business. But it also provides components for shipbuilders and oil and gas firms.

According to technical sales manager, Rich Dixon, smaller companies are more flexible and able to adapt to changing circumstances.

“I think we’re lucky in some ways, because 60% of our business is diversified across many different industries,” he says. “The last thing you want to be is 100% automotive.

“The difficulty is that higher up the food chain, there are some big companies that are very reliant on automotive.”

Some argue there is another way forward. Chinese giants such as Chery Group and Dongfeng want to expand their international operations – and see the transition to electric vehicles as an opportunity to do this in the European market.

“If you embrace the move to electric vehicles and become a leading light in attracting Chinese investment, then you can do what China did to us in the past, which is essentially use collaboration to rebuild your industry,” argues Andy Palmer, who now owns and invests in clean energy companies.

This would, he adds, require significant government action, including negotiations with Beijing.

The question is, is it already too late?

One senior executive, who has spent decades in the European industry, doesn’t believe the UK will become a major player in the EV market.

“I don’t think governments have spent the necessary time and energy preparing for the shift to EVs.

“I don’t see much opportunity for new players to come in,” says the executive, who asked not to be named. “It’s all about encouraging those who are already here to stay, and if possible to expand.”

Another option, Felipe Munoz believes, is that the UK could double down on its position as a key player in the market for high-end cars.

This could mean becoming a hub for the production of luxury Chinese designs, while allowing cheaper mass-market models to be built elsewhere.

“I think people globally are willing to pay a premium for a British-made luxury car,” adds Prof Bailey.

There is plenty at stake here, and it goes beyond the impact on local communities when factories are lost or suppliers stop trading.

“I also worry about it in terms of impacts on productivity, exports, and research and development,” says Prof Bailey.

“Part of the reason why we’ve got poor productivity performance in the UK is that we have allowed too much manufacturing to go.”

This is where we differ from our European counterparts, argues Steve Fowler, EV editor for The Independent. “We tend not to support our homegrown industries in the same way that other countries do”.

What is harder to assess is the loss of national prestige. When MG Rover collapsed in 2005, there was an outcry, not just because thousands lost their jobs, but also because it was perceived as a symbol of the wider decline of British industry.

This became even more marked when MG – a classic British brand – became a boutique badge for cars made in China.

Many of the upmarket brands that still build cars in this country deliberately trade on their British identity. Think of Rolls Royce, Bentley, McLaren and Lotus. Even BMW-Mini, a mass market manufacturer, is more than willing to wave the Union Jack – or rather, have it painted on door mirrors and roofs.

If those cars were no longer built in Britain, it might well be perceived as a national humiliation. And for some, the decline of the auto industry would almost certainly be perceived as a symptom of a much wider loss.

“I do think people are [becoming] much more aware of where things are made,” argues Mr Fowler. “This isn’t necessarily a nationalistic thing, but more a sustainability thing. Do you want your car to have travelled halfway around the world to reach you?”

Ultimately, he says, there is already “a bit of a brain drain of talent, because the opportunities, bluntly, aren’t here in the UK.

“[But] the UK is a great place to make cars, we have incredible expertise, we have some of the best engineers and people who can build them better than anybody else.”

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.

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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.

“This has been the turning point for me – it’s improved my confidence, my own self-belief.”

Single mum Roxanne Freeman says she lived beyond her means and used her credit cards to support her family, even using one to put down a deposit on a caravan.

She had racked up £13,000 worth of debt by summer 2023, but her fortunes changed after she turned her hand to content creation, filming and posting reviews of plus-size clothing on TikTok.

The 36-year-old from Leicester earns commissions on her videos – up to £5,000 a month now, she says – and has cleared her debt.

Roxanne is among a growing number of people turning to social media to boost their income and says: “It’s literally life-changing.”

Roxanne was working as a Slimming World consultant when she bought a dress from TikTok Shop and filmed herself trying it on before posting a review for her 1,000 followers in February 2024.

She says she earned £200 in commission from the dress manufacturer in a week – 10% for each one bought via the link she posted with her video – and was soon approached by other companies offering her samples to review.

“In my second month I earned £600 and it just went up and up gradually,” she adds.

“I’m now earning up to £5,000 per month from just two to three hours’ work a day, it’s insane.”

• Listen: Roxanne Freeman cleared her debts after turning to social media to boost her income

Roxanne, who now has almost 50,000 followers, has since left her slimming consultant job and relies solely on her income from TikTok.

She says her earnings vary each month depending on her followers, but she has earned enough to pay off her debts and to do more with her sons, aged six and 10.

“I took the kids on holiday – my youngest boy had never been abroad before,” she says.

“Sometimes imposter syndrome does sneak in a little bit and I worry, but you could lose any job tomorrow.”

Like Roxanne, married couple Holly and Diego Hernandezalso earn money by posting videos on TikTok.

Holly, from Leicester, and Diego, from Mexico, met on the social media platform when they were 16 and went on to set up an account to document their relationship and daily life.

The couple now have almost 300,000 followers and earn up to £5,000 a month, but they have both kept their day jobs – Holly, 22, is a nurse and Diego, 23, works for a medical supply company.

Some of their income comes via the TikTok Creator Fund, which pays users for their content.

To be eligible, creators must be 18 or older, have 10,000 followers or more and have had at least 100,000 video views in the 30 days before applying to join the fund.

For Holly and Diego, who live in Leicester, they are paid according to their video interactions.

They are also paid by record labels to play particular songs in the background of their videos.

Due to their success, the couple have become a limited company – registered with Companies House – and have signed with a management agency.

Holly says: “We were so young when the money came in, and we were going on amazing holidays and buying things.

“I wish there was somebody back then who guided us, because I think we would have invested or saved it.

“In the beginning, I was trying to manage the monetary side of it myself and I found it really overwhelming.

“Things like taxes came into play, so we ended up getting an accountant and becoming a limited company.”

The couple post videos most days but admit there are negatives to sharing their lives so openly.

“I think the biggest downside is the trolls,” says Holly.

“There’s always someone hounding you because of our relationship or the way that we look, the way we speak or the way we dress.

“It can get to you when it’s constant.”

Estelle Keeber, also from Leicester, started a Facebook group aimed at female business owners in 2017 and, after gaining a large following, started charging for her social media expertise.

The 42-year-old says she turned over £1.2m in the first two years and now runs a social media marketing consultancy firm called Immortal Monkey.

“Whether you want to be an influencer or an affiliate marketer, there has never been a better time for people to be jumping in,” she says.

“But it does takes time, it takes a lot of hard work, especially if you’re building a brand around yourself. It is constant hard work.”

Estelle is now setting up a community interest company to link influencers with schools to educate the next generation on content creation.

“I think influencer marketing is here to stay because it’s an organic way of marketing,” she says.

“Nobody wants to be sold to, whereas when it’s organic, people trust and believe in that person – and the bigger brands are really understanding this now.”

According to Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform, there are 54 million social media users in the UK and 84% of adults follow an influencer.

But anyone who makes a living from or supplements their income by posting content online is subject to the same tax laws as everyone else.

According to Revenue and Customs, income from creating online content includes gifts and services received from promoting products on social media.

If someone’s total income is more than the £1,000 allowance for the tax year, including any gifts and services received, they must tell HMRC about it.

Zubair Ali, managing partner of MyTaxDoc Accountants, based in Birmingham, says three in 10 of the firm’s clients are social media influencers.

“Just because you’ve got a million followers, HMRC won’t let it slide,” Zubair says.

“The last thing anyone wants is a big, fat juicy tax bill which they haven’t got the means to pay for.”

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.

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”.

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.

French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged the violence committed by his country’s forces in Cameroon during and after the Central African nation’s struggle for independence.

It followed a joint report by Cameroonian and French historians examining France’s suppression of independence movements from 1945 to 1971.

In a letter to Cameroon’s President Paul Biya made public on Tuesday, Macron said the report made clear “a war had taken place in Cameroon, during which the colonial authorities and the French army exercised repressive violence of several kinds in certain regions of the country”.

“It is up to me today to assume the role and responsibility of France in these events,” he said.

However, Macron fell short of offering a clear apology for the atrocities committed by French troops in its former colony, which gained independence in 1960.

The French leader cited four independence icons who were killed during military operations led by French forces, including Ruben Um Nyobe, the firebrand leader of the anti-colonialist UPC party.

France pushed hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians into internment camps and supported brutal militias to quash the independence struggle, the AFP news agency quotes the report as saying.

Tens of thousands of people were killed between 1956 and 1961, the historians’ report said.

• France admits colonial ‘massacre’, says Senegal’s leader

The decision to investigate and publish the findings on France’s role in Cameroon’s independence struggle was made in 2022, during Macron’s visit to Yaoundé.

It followed pressure from within the country for France to acknowledge its atrocities in its former colony and pay reparations.

Macron also expressed willingness to work with Cameroon to promote further research on the matter, while highlighting the need for both countries to make the findings available to universities and scientific bodies.

The BBC has reached out to Cameroon’s government for comment on the French president’s admission.

While Macron did not address calls for reparations, it is likely to be a key talking-point in Cameroon going forward.

Under Macron, France has attempted to confront its brutal colonial past.

Last year, it acknowledged for the first time that its soldiers had carried out a “massacre” in Senegal in which West African troops were killed in 1944.

Macron has previously acknowledged France’s role in the Rwandan genocide, in which about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died, and sought forgiveness.

In 2021, he said France had not heeded warnings of impending carnage and had for too long “valued silence over examination of the truth”.

France has also made several attempts over the years to reconcile with its former colony Algeria, but has stopped short of issuing a formal apology.

In 2017, Macron, then a presidential candidate, described the colonisation of Algeria as a “crime against humanity”, but two years later, he said there would be no “repentance nor apologies” for it.

Instead, he said France would take part in “symbolic acts” aimed at promoting reconciliation, and commemorating the history of its violent occupation of the north African country.

Recently, several West African countries under military rule, including Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, have severed their ties with France, accusing it of continued neo-colonial control.

• Is France to blame for coups in West Africa?
• Is Cameroon’s 92-year-old leader set for an eighth term?
• Macron asks Rwanda to forgive France over 1994 genocide role
• ‘Nowhere is safe’ – Cameroonians trapped between separatists and soldiers

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.

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.

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 BMW has owned the Rolls Royce car brand for nearly 30 years, 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 Erginbilgic certainly believes he has set the sails just right.

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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.

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 windscreen wipers and braking 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.

A political row has erupted in India over allegations of “vote theft”, with opposition parties accusing the country’s election body of irregularities, which they say favoured the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 general elections.

On Tuesday, parliament was adjourned after opposition MPs demanded a debate on the integrity of India’s electoral process.

A day earlier, dozens of opposition leaders, including Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, were briefly detained by the police in the capital Delhi, as they tried to march to the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) headquarters.

Gandhi first raised the issue at a 7 August press conference in Delhi, and has since managed to galvanise strong support from hundreds of opposition lawmakers.

The Election Commission and the BJP have aggressively rejected the allegations.

Gandhi has alleged widespread voter manipulation during the 2024 parliamentary elections, citing granular data obtained from the electoral body itself – though the ECI and the ruling party dispute his interpretation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi secured a historic third term in the elections, but his BJP-led alliance fell short of the sweeping majority predicted. Voter turnout averaged 66% in the world’s largest election, with nearly a billion registered voters – one in eight people on Earth.

Gandhi cited electoral data for Mahadevapura, a part of the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency, and claimed that the voter list had more than 100,000 manipulated entries, including duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and bulk registrations of votes at single locations.

He presented examples of voters like Shakun Rani, who he claimed cast her ballots twice – a claim disputed by the election body.

Gandhi also alleged CCTV footage from polling booths was deleted and pointed out an instance of 80 people registered in a single address in Mahadevapura.

The Congress leader says his party lost at least 48 seats in the elections due to such irregularities and has accused India’s election body of failing to enforce the “one man, one vote” principle. The Congress won 99 of the 543 seats in the elections, behind BJP’s 240.

Gandhi has demanded that the ECI release digital voter rolls, so that they can be audited by his party and the public.

The BBC hasn’t independently verified Gandhi’s claims.

Soon after Gandhi’s press conference, ECI responded on social media platform X, calling his allegations “absurd” and denying many of his claims.

The polling body has demanded that he either submit a signed declaration under oath or apologise to the nation.

ECI’s Karnataka state unit further said that the Congress didn’t file formal objections when the electoral roll was being revised ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.

The poll body earlier said it keeps CCTV footage only for 45 days after results – the window for filing election disputes.

BJP leaders have also strongly rebutted the allegations.

“This anarchy is extremely worrying and dangerous for democracy,” BJP leader and federal education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.

Federal agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said Gandhi and the opposition alliance were “defaming democracy, tearing it to shreds, and tampering with the dignity of constitutional institutions”.

Gandhi’s allegations have led to an uproar as they come in the backdrop of a controversy over a month-long revision of electoral rolls in Bihar state, where key elections are scheduled for November.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), held between June and July, saw officials visit all 78.9 million voters in the state for verification – the first update since 2003.

The ECI says the drive targets duplicate and deceased voters, but critics say its haste has disenfranchised many, especially migrants and minorities.

Many voters in Bihar have told the BBC that the draft rolls have wrong photos and include dead people.

India’s Supreme Court is currently hearing a batch of petitions challenging the SIR, with petitioners demanding publication of the deleted names – about 6.5 million – with reasons for their removal.

The election body says deletions include 2.2 million dead, 700,000 enrolled more than once and 3.6 million who have migrated from the state.

Corrections are open until 1 September, with over 165,000 applications received. A similar review will be conducted nationwide to verify nearly a billion voters.

The court has said that the allegations of disenfranchisement “largely appears to be a case of trust deficit, nothing else” and that it would “step in immediately” if mass exclusion of voters is proven.

On 12 August, Gandhi escalated his claims of vote theft, saying such manipulation was happening “at a national level and systematically”.

Highlighting the case of a 124-year-old voter’s name found in the draft electoral list of Bihar he said: “There are unlimited cases like that. ‘Abhi picture baki hai’ [the story is not over yet].”

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, police arrested Ross Judd, 34, at a train station about 7km from the scene. He appeared in court on Wednesday, charged with two counts of murder.

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”.

During Wednesday’s hearing at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, prosecutors requested another 10 weeks to prepare their brief of evidence – which was granted – due to the complexity of the case and delays in the autopsies of the victims.

Judd’s lawyer also asked that her client be assessed by a prison nurse to follow up on his medication.

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.

The case was adjourned to January next year, and Judd was remanded in custody.

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 cities controlled by Democrats.

He has said crime is on the rise in the cities including in Washington DC, although analysis by BBC Verify suggests a different trend in DC.

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

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

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

• Is crime in Washington DC ‘out of control’, as Trump claims?

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.

Despite crime figures showing a decrease in violent offences, DC Police Union chairman Gregg Pemberton has said the city police department is “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.

Three children have been charged with the murder of a man who was found dead on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.

A 16-year-old girl and two boys, aged 14 and 15, were arrested following an altercation in Leysdown-on-Sea on Sunday night.

Alexander Cashford, 49, from Kent, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

A 12-year-old girl was also arrested in connection with the incident on Tuesday in Basildon, Essex, and remains in custody.

The trio, who are all from London, have been charged with murder by joint venture.

They have been remanded in custody to appear before Medway Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.

They cannot legally be named due to their age.

Police said Mr Cashford was assaulted following a disturbance involving a small group of people in the Warden Bay Road area, close to Jetty Road, at 19:00 BST on Sunday.

He sustained “multiple injuries” to his body, a police spokesperson added.

A car was seized by officers as part of the investigation.

Kevin McKenna, MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, previously said he was “deeply saddened and shocked by the tragic incident”.

Kent Police said it was continuing to appeal for any witnesses to come forward.

Anyone who has information or who has CCTV or dashcam footage is urged to contact the force.

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.

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

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

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

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

That caused problems at his new job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Sawant’s difficulties are common.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He thinks it will help more people like him.

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

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

Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman, said the residential areas of Zeitoun and Sabra had been hit for three days causing “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 Organization 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 take over 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 four Al Jazeera journalists in a targeted attack on a media tent in Gaza City, sparking widespread international condemnation. Two other freelance journalists were killed. The IDF 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.

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.

Artificial intelligence start-up Perplexity AI has made a surprise $34.5bn (£25.6bn) takeover bid for the world’s most popular web browser, Google Chrome.

The three-year-old firm, whose backers include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and chip maker Nvidia, is headed by a former Google and OpenAI employee.

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

The BBC has contacted Google for comment.

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.

Chrome has an estimated three billion users.

Google’s dominance of the search engine and online advertising market has come under intense scrutiny, with the tech giant the subject of two antitrust cases in the US.

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.”

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.

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

“I love their boldness but this is an unsolicited bid and is not actually funded yet,” Judith MacKenzie, head of Downing Fund Managers, told the BBC’s Today programme.

Technology industry investor 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.

Meanwhile, Tomasz Tunguz from Theory Ventures put the value of Chrome at “maybe ten times more valuable than the bid or more.”

Perplexity 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.

But it has been the subject of controversy, especially form media organisations which have accused it of breaking copyright rules.

In June, the BBC sent a legal letter to Perplexity chief executive Aravind Srinivas accusing his company of reproducing BBC content “verbatim” without its permission.

In response, Perplexity said: “The BBC’s claims are just one more part of the overwhelming evidence that the BBC will do anything to preserve Google’s illegal monopoly.”

It did not explain what it believed the relevance of Google was to the BBC’s position, or offer any further comment.

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.

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.