Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has instructed negotiations to begin for the release of all remaining hostages and an end to the war in Gaza on terms “acceptable to Israel”.

Netanyahu told Israeli troops on Thursday night that his cabinet had also approved plans for a massive assault on Gaza City in the north of the territory, despite widespread international and domestic opposition.

Hamas agreed to a proposal drawn up by Qatari and Egyptian mediators for a 60-day ceasefire on Monday, which according to Qatar would see the release of half of the remaining hostages in Gaza.

But responding for the first time, Netanyahu has not accepted the deal currently on the table.

Israeli media has cited an Israeli official as saying negotiators will be dispatched for renewed talks once a location has been determined.

In a video statement during a visit with the Gaza division’s headquarters in Israel on Thursday night, Netanyahu said he had “instructed to immediately begin negotiations for the release of all our hostages”.

“I have come to approve the IDF’s (Israel Defense Forces) plans to take control of Gaza City and defeat Hamas,” he said.

“These two matters – defeating Hamas and releasing all our hostages – go hand in hand,” Netanyahu added, without providing details about what the next stage of talks would entail.

Israeli officials have this week been voicing opposition to a ceasefire deal that would only involve the partial release of hostages.

On Wednesday, Hamas accused Netanyahu of disregarding the mediators’ ceasefire proposal and accused him of obstructing an agreement, according to a statement cited by Reuters.

Last Saturday, Netanyahu’s office put out a statement saying that Israel would only “agree to a deal on condition that all the hostages are released in one go”, and that the conditions for ending the war included the disarming of Hamas, the demilitarisation of Gaza, Israeli control of the Gaza perimeter, and the installation of non-Hamas and non-Palestinian Authority governance.

Israel believes that only 20 of the 50 hostages are still alive after 22 months of war.

Palestinians said there had been heavy bombardment in eastern areas of Gaza City on Thursday, a day after the military said it had taken the first steps in the offensive.

The IDF has warned medical officials and international organisations to prepare for the planned evacuation of Gaza City’s entire population of one million residents to shelters in the south before troops move in.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said it rejected “any step that would undermine what remains of the health system”. The UN and aid groups have vowed to stay to help those who cannot or choose not to move.

Netanyahu announced Israel’s intention to take control of the entire Gaza Strip after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal broke down last month.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 62,192 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry. The ministry’s figures are quoted by the UN and others as the most reliable source of statistics available on casualties.

Russia has launched 574 drones and 40 missiles on Ukraine in one of the heaviest bombardments in weeks, Ukrainian officials say.

One person was killed in a drone and missile strike on the western city of Lviv, while 15 others were reported wounded in an attack on the south-western Transcarpathia region.

The attacks came as US President Donald Trump spearheads diplomatic moves to halt the war. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the strikes highlighted why efforts to bring it to an end were “so critical”.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine was ready to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin “in neutral Europe” – mooting Switzerland or Austria – adding that he was not against Istanbul either.

Zelensky has stated his willingness to meet Putin in “any format”, although he has poured cold water on the idea of talks taking place in Budapest, which he said “is not easy today”.

The prospect of direct talks emerged after Trump met Putin in Alaska, and then hosted Zelensky and European leaders at the White House on Monday.

The US president initially suggested trilateral talks involving him, Putin and Zelensky, but has since suggested he might not take part: “Now I think it would be better if they met without me… If necessary, I’ll go.”

Ukraine’s air force counted 614 drones and other missiles fired by Russia overnight into Thursday and said it had stopped 577 of them. It is the biggest air attack since July.

While Russian strikes tend to focus on eastern regions close to the front lines, the latest attacks hit western areas as well.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its forces have occupied most of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, including Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russia currently controls around a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.

Sybiha said hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles were among the weapons used in the overnight barrage.

The Ukrainian air force said many of the attacks came from western Russia, as well as from the Black Sea, while one missile came from Russian-occupied Crimea.

In the western Lviv region, where one person was killed, three more were injured in attacks that damaged more than 20 civilian buildings including residential homes and a nursery.

Another 15 people were injured when cruise missiles hit a US electronics firm in the far south-western town of Mukachevo in Transcarpathia, not far from Ukraine’s borders with Hungary and Slovakia.

“One of the missiles struck a major American electronics manufacturer in our westernmost region, leading to serious damage and casualties,” Sybiha wrote on social media on Thursday. The plant produces coffee machines and other household goods, officials say.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Zelensky said there was still no sign from Moscow that they “truly intend to engage in substantive negotiations” to end the war.

He also made clear his lack of enthusiasm for Budapest as a host for potential talks on Thursday, citing Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s strong ties with Moscow: “I’m not saying that Orban’s policy was against Ukraine, but it was against supporting Ukraine.”

The idea of the Hungarian capital as a potential venue for peace talks has emerged in recent days. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Budapest was ready to provide “appropriately fair and safe conditions” for negotiations to take place.

The Ukrainian leader also said Russian forces were massing on the southern front line in the Zaporizhzhia region – one of four regions of Ukraine that Russia now claims as its own.

“We can see that they continue transferring part of their troops from the Kursk direction to Zaporizhzhia.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine said its armed forces had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region, which borders the Donbas.

Officials said they also hit a Russian drone depot in the occupied eastern city of Donetsk, as well as other military and infrastructure facilities.

While bloody fighting continues, the front lines in the war have remained largely stagnant in recent months, with small, territorial gains.

Amidst this stalemate on the ground, Russia has expanded its aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure – particularly as diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the war ramped up.

Ukraine suffered its largest-ever aerial attack in early July, when 728 drones and 13 missiles struck cities across the country in multiple waves.

In the wake of the latest attack, Sybiha reiterated Ukraine’s call for additional air defences from allies to fend off future attacks.

McDonald’s Japan has postponed a child’s menu toy promotion after complaints that a recent Pokémon giveaway led to piles of food being dumped, with the cards then being sold on for profit.

The fast-food giant said on Thursday that its collaboration with the popular pirate-themed manga title “One Piece” would now not run.

Earlier this month, the McDonald’s giveaway of limited-edition Pokémon cards with its “Happy Set” meals led to long queues and bulk-buying.

Pictures shared online showed bags of food dumped on the street and complaints that the cards were being sold online for profit. The giveaway was planned to last for three days, but many outlets ran out of cards on the first.

In a statement on its website, McDonald’s Japan said that it had “postponed” the One Piece promotion, which was due to start on 29 August, as part of a “review of Happy Set-related initiatives”.

Customers would now receive toys that accompanied previous Happy Set meals instead, the company said.

Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency has told McDonald’s it must improve its sales strategy and take steps to improve food wastage.

One Piece is a long-running series of comics and an animated programme, in which a pirate boy battles rivals while searching for treasure known as “One Piece”. The comics were launched in 1997, with the animated series coming two years later.

Several related games and toys are hugely popular in Japan.

McDonald’s has had similar problems with other campaigns in the past, including a collaboration with the “Chiikawa” manga series that was also targeted by online resales.

After the Pokémon debacle, McDonald’s Japan issued a public apology and pledged to take steps to prevent similar issues in the future.

Pokémon cards are extremely popular among children but also attract adult fans and collectors, with billions printed and some selling for tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One of the cards from the recent promotion, featuring the popular character Pikachu, is currently listed on one online auction site for over £25,000 ($33,000).

Last week, McDonald’s told local media it was reviewing its giveaways after the Pokémon campaign led to “large-scale purchases for the purpose of reselling, which resulted in store congestion or food being left behind and discarded”.

It said it was discontinuing the promotion and would be imposing a cap on the numbers of Happy Set meals that could be bought by customers.

Millie Bobby Brown has announced she and husband Jake Bongiovi have adopted a baby daughter.

The 21-year-old star of Stranger Things and Enola Holmes posted a message on Instagram saying: “This summer, we welcomed our sweet baby girl through adoption.

“We are beyond excited to embark on this beautiful next chapter of parenthood in both peace and privacy.”

It ended: “And then there were 3. Love, Millie and Jake Bongiovi.” The couple didn’t reveal the name of their new addition.

The news comes 15 months after the actress married Bongiovi, the 23-year-old son of rock singer Jon Bon Jovi.

At the end of last year, she finished filming the final season of Stranger Things, one of the most popular shows in Netflix’s history.

The supernatural drama gave Brown her breakthrough at the age of 12, and will conclude when season five is released at the end of 2025.

She finished shooting a third Enola Holmes film at the end of June, and has also starred in Netflix’s Damsel and The Electric State, as well as two Godzilla films.

Glinting in the autumn sun on a parade ground in Beijing, the People’s Liberation Army missiles moved slowly past the crowd on a fleet of giant camouflaged lorries.

Needle-sharp in profile, measuring 11 metres long and weighing 15 tonnes, each bore the letters and numerals: “DF-17”.

China had just unveiled to the world its arsenal of Dongfeng hypersonic missiles.

That was on 1 October 2019 at a National Day parade. The US was already aware that these weapons were in development, but since then China has raced ahead with upgrading them.

Thanks to their speed and manoeuvrability – travelling at more than five times the speed of sound – they are a formidable weapon, so much so that they could change the way wars are fought.

Which is why the global contest over developing them is heating up.

“This is just one component of the wider picture of the emerging geopolitical contest that we’re seeing between state actors,” says William Freer, a national security fellow at the Council on Geostrategy think tank.

“[It’s one] we haven’t had since the Cold War.”

The Beijing ceremony raised speculation about a possible growing threat posed by China’s advancements in hypersonic technology. Today it leads the field in hypersonic missiles, followed by Russia.

The US, meanwhile, is playing catch-up, while the UK has none.

Mr Freer of the Council on Geostrategy think tank, which received some of its funding from defence industry companies, the Ministry of Defence and others, argues that the reason China and Russia are ahead is relatively simple.

“They decided to invest a lot of money in these programmes quite a few years ago.”

Meanwhile, for much of the first two decades of this century, many Western nations focused on fighting both jihadist-inspired terrorism at home, and counter-insurgency wars overseas.

Back then, the prospect of having to fight a peer-on-peer conflict against a modern, sophisticated adversary seemed a distant one.

“The net result is that we failed to notice the massive rise of China as a military power,” admitted Sir Alex Younger, soon after retiring as chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service in 2020.

Other nations are also racing ahead: Israel has a hypersonic missile, the Arrow 3, designed to be an interceptor.

Iran has claimed to have hypersonic weapons, and said it launched a hypersonic missile at Israel during their brief but violent 12-day war in June.

(The weapon did indeed travel at extremely high speed but it was not thought to be manoeuvrable enough in flight to class as a true hypersonic).

North Korea, meanwhile, has been working on its own versions since 2021 and claims to have a viable, working weapon (pictured).

The US and UK are now investing in hypersonic missile technology, as are other nations, including France and Japan.

The US appears to be strengthening its deterrence, and has debuted its “Dark Eagle” hypersonic weapon.

According to the US Department of Defense, the Dark Eagle “brings to mind the power and determination of our country and its Army as it represents the spirit and lethality of the Army and Navy’s hypersonic weapon endeavours”.

But China and Russia are currently far ahead – and according to some experts, this is a potential concern.

Hypersonic means something that travels at speeds of Mach 5 or faster. (That’s five times the speed of sound or 3,858 mph.) This puts them in a different league to something that is just supersonic, meaning travelling at above the speed of sound (767 mph).

And their speed is partially the reason that hypersonic missiles are considered such a threat.

The fastest to date is Russian – the Avangard – claimed to be able to reach speeds of Mach 27 (roughly 20,700mph) – although the figure of around Mach 12 (9,200mph) is more often cited, which equates to two-miles-a-second.

In terms of purely destructive power, however, hypersonic missiles are not hugely different from supersonic or subsonic cruise missiles, according to Mr Freer.

“It’s the difficulty in detecting, tracking and intercepting them that really sets them apart.”

There are basically two kinds of hypersonic missile: boost-glide missiles rely on a rocket (like those DF-17 ones in China) to propel them towards and sometimes just above the Earth’s atmosphere, from where they then come hurtling down at these incredible speeds.

Unlike the more common ballistic missiles, which travel in a fairly predictable arc – a parabolic curve – hypersonic glide vehicles can move in an erratic way, manoeuvred in final flight towards their target.

Then there are hypersonic cruise missiles, which hug terrain, trying to stay below radar to avoid detection.

They are similarly launched and accelerated using a rocket booster, then once they reach hypersonic velocity, they then activate a system known as a “scramjet engine” that takes in air as it flies, propelling it to its target.

These are “dual-use weapons”, meaning their warhead can be either nuclear or conventional high explosive. But there is more to these weapons than speed alone.

For a missile to be classed as truly “hypersonic” in military terms, it needs to be manoeuvrable in flight. In other words, the army that fired it needs it to be able to change course in sudden and unpredictable ways, even as it is hurtling towards its target at extreme speeds.

This can make it extremely hard to intercept. Most terrestrial-based radars cannot be relied upon to detect hypersonic missiles until late in the weapon’s flight.

“By flying under the radar horizon they can evade early detection and may only appear on sensors in their terminal flight phase, limiting interception opportunities,” says Patrycja Bazylczyk, research associate at the Missile Defence Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, which has received some of its funding from US government entities, as well as defence industry companies and others.

The answer to this, she believes, is bolstering the West’s space-based sensors, which would overcome the limitations of radars on the ground.

In a real-time war scenario, there is also a terrifying question facing the nation being targeted: is this a nuclear attack or a conventional one?

“Hypersonics haven’t so much changed the nature of warfare as altered the timeframes within which you can operate,” says Tom Sharpe, a former Royal Navy Commander and anti-air warfare specialist.

“The basics of needing to track your enemy, fire at them, then manoeuvre the missile late on to allow for a moving target (the great advantage of ships) are no different from previous missiles, be that ballistic, supersonic or subsonic.

“Similarly the defender’s requirement to track and either jam or destroy an incoming hypersonic missile are the same as before, you just have less time”.

There are signs that this technology is worrying Washington. A report published in February this year by the US Congressional Research Service warns: “US defence officials have stated that both terrestrial and current space-based sensor architectures are insufficient to detect and track hypersonic weapons.”

Yet some experts believe that some of the hype around hypersonics is overdone.

Dr Sidharth Kaushal, from the Royal United Services Institute defence think tank, is among those who think that they are not necessarily a gamechanger.

“The speed and manoeuvrability makes them attractive against high value targets and their kinetic energy on impact also makes them a useful means of engaging hardened and buried targets, which might have been difficult to destroy with most conventionally armed munitions previously.”

But though they travel at five times the speed of sound or more, there are measures to defend against them – some of which are “effective,” argues Mr Sharpe.

The first is making tracking and detection more difficult. “Ships can go to great lengths to protect their position,” he adds.

“The grainy satellite picture available from commercial satellites only needs to be a few minutes out of date for it to be of no use for targeting.

“Getting satellite targeting solutions current and accurate enough to use for targeting is both difficult and expensive.”

But he points out that artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies will likely change this over time.

The fact remains that Russia and China have stolen a march when it comes to developing these weapons. “I think the Chinese hypersonic programmes… are impressive and concerning,” says Mr Freer.

But he adds: “When it comes to the Russians, we should probably be a lot more cautious about what they claim.”

In November 2024, Russia launched an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile at an industrial site in Dnipro, Ukraine, using it as a live testing ground.

The missile, which Ukraine said travelled at hypersonic speeds of Mach 11 (or 8,439mph), was given the name ‘Oreshnik’, Russian for hazel tree.

President Vladimir Putin said that the weapon travelled at a speed of Mach 10.

Its warhead is reported to have deliberately fragmented during its final descent into several, independently targeted inert projectiles, a methodology dating back to the Cold War.

Someone who heard it land told me that it was not particularly loud but there were several impacts: six warheads dropped at separate targets but as they were inert, the damage was not significantly greater than that caused by Russia’s nightly bombardment of Ukraine’s cities.

For Europe, the latent threat to Nato countries comes primarily from Russia’s missiles, some of which are stationed on the Baltic coast in Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad. What if Putin were to order a strike on Kyiv with an Oreshnik, this time armed with a full payload of high explosive?

The Russian leader claimed this weapon was going into mass production and that they had the capacity, he said, to turn targets “to dust”.

Russia also has other missiles that travel at hypersonic speeds.

Putin made much of his air force’s Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles, claiming they travelled so fast it was impossible to intercept. Since then, he has fired plenty of them at Ukraine — but it turns out that the Kinzhal may not be truly hypersonic, and many have been intercepted.

Of concern to the West is Russia’s super-fast and highly manoeuvrable Avangard. At a ceremony for its unveiling in 2018 – along with five other so-called ‘superweapons’ – Putin declared it was unstoppable.

Dr Sidharth Kaushal suggests its primary role may actually be “overcoming US missile defences”.

“Russia’s state armament programmes also suggest its production capacity for a system like Avangard is limited,” he argues.

Elsewhere, as the contest for strategic supremacy in the Western Pacific heats up between the US and China, the proliferation of China’s ballistic missile arsenal poses a serious potential threat to the US naval presence in the South China Sea and beyond.

China has the world’s most powerful arsenal of hypersonics. In late 2024, China unveiled its latest hypersonic glide vehicle, the GDF-600. With a 1,200kg payload, it can carry sub-munitions and reach speeds of Mach 7 (5,370mph).

The UK is behind in this race, especially as it’s one of the five nuclear-armed permanent members of the UN Security Council. But belatedly, it is making an effort to catch up, or at least to join the race.

In April, the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory announced that UK scientists had reached “a landmark moment” after the successful completion of a major testing programme.

The UK’s propulsion test was the result of a three-way collaboration between the UK government, industry and the US government. Over a period of six weeks a total of 233 “successful static test runs” were carried out at the NASA Langley Research Centre in Virginia, USA.

John Healey, the UK’s Defence Secretary, called it “a milestone moment.”

But it will still be years before this weapon is ready.

As well as creating hypersonic missiles, the West should focus on creating strong defence against them, argues Mr Freer.

“When it comes to missile warfare, it’s all about two sides of the same coin. You’ve got to be able to do damage limitation while also having the ability to go after the enemy’s launch platforms.

“If you’ve got both hands available, and you can both defend yourself to an extent and also counter attack… then an adversary is a lot less likely to attempt to initiate conflict.”

However, Tom Sharpe is still cautions about the extent to which we should be concerned at the moment.

“The key point with hypersonics,” he says, “is that both sides of this equation are as difficult as each other – and neither are perfected… yet”.

On a blistering morning earlier this week, an unusually large crowd had gathered at Imjingang Station – the last stop on Seoul’s metropolitan subway line that inches the closest to North Korea.

There were dozens of activists and police officers, their attention fixed on one man: Ahn Hak-sop, a 95-year-old former North Korean prisoner of war who was making his way home, to the other side of the border that divides the Korean peninsula.

It was what Mr Ahn called his final journey – he wanted to return to the North to be buried there, after spending most of his life in South Korea, much of it against his will.

He never made it across: he was turned away, as was expected because the South Korean government had said they did not have enough time to make the necessary arrangements.

But Mr Ahn came as close as he could.

Weakened by pulmonary oedema (a build up of fluid on the lungs), he could not manage the 30 minute walk from the station to the Unification Bridge – or Tongil Dae-gyo – one of the few passageways connecting South Korea to the North.

So he stepped out of the car roughly 200 metres from the bridge and walked the final stretch on foot, flanked by two supporters who steadied him.

He returned holding a North Korean flag, a sight rarely seen and deeply jarring in the South, and addressed the reporters and 20 or so volunteers who had turned up in support.

“I just want my body to rest in a truly independent land,” he said. “A land free from imperialism.”

Ahn Hak-sop was 23 when he was captured by the South Koreans.

Three years earlier, he had been in high school when then-North Korean ruler Kim Il-sung attacked the South. Kim, who wanted to reunify the two Koreas, rallied his countrymen by claiming that the South had initiated the 1950 attack.

Ahn was among those who believed this. He joined the North Korean People’s Army in 1952 as a liaison officer, and was then assigned a unit that was sent to the South.

He was captured in April 1953, three months before the armistice, and sentenced to life in prison the same year. He was released more than 42 years later because of a special pardon on the Korean independence day.

Like many other North Korean prisoners, Mr Ahn too was labelled a “redhead”, a reference to his communist sympathies, and he struggled to find a proper job.

It wasn’t easy, he told the BBC in an earlier interview in July. The government didn’t help much at first, he said, agents followed him for years. He married, and even fostered a child, but he never felt he truly belonged.

Throughout, he made his home in a small village in Gimpo, the closest a civilian can live to the border with the North.

Yet in 2000, he turned down the chance to be sent back to the North along with dozens of other prisoners who also wanted to return.

He had been optimistic then that ties between the two sides would improve, that their people would be able to travel back and forth freely.

But he chose to stay because he feared leaving would be a win for the Americans.

“At the time, they were pushing for US military governance [in the South],” he said.

“If I returned to the North, it would’ve felt like I was just handing over my own bedroom to the Americans – vacating it for them. My conscience as a human being just couldn’t allow that.”

It’s not clear what he was referring to other than growing ties between Seoul and Washington, which includes a strong military alliance which guarantees South Korea protection from any attack from the North.

That relationship deeply bothers Mr Ahn, who has never stopped believing the Kim family’s propaganda – that the only thing stopping the reunification of the Korean peninsula was an “imperialist America” and a South Korean government that was beholden to them.

Born in 1930 in Ganghwa County, Gyeonggi Province, during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, Mr Ahn was the youngest of three brothers. He also had two younger sisters.

Patriotism took root early. His grandfather refused to let him attend school because he “didn’t want to make me Japanese”, he recalled. So he started school later than usual, after his grandfather died.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, bringing an end to World War Two and its colonisation of Korea, Mr Ahn and his younger brother, who had deserted the Japanese military, were hiding at their aunt’s house at the foot of Mount Mani on Ganghwa Island.

“That wasn’t liberation – it was just a transfer of colonial rule,” he said.

“A leaflet [we saw] said that Korea wasn’t being liberated, but that US military rule would be implemented instead. It even said that if anyone violated US military law, they would be strictly punished under military law.”

As the Soviet Union and the US tussled over the Korean peninsula, they agreed to to divide it. The Soviets took control of the North and the US, the South, where they set up a military administration until 1948.

When Kim attacked in 1950, a South Korean government was in place – but Mr Ahn, like so many North Koreans, believes the South provoked the conflict and that its alliance with Washington prevented reunification.

Once he was captured, Mr Ahn had several chances to avoid prison – he was asked to sign documents renouncing the North and its communist ideology, which was called “conversion”. But he refused.

“Because I refused to sign a written oath of conversion, I had to endure endless humiliation, torture, and violence – days filled with shame and pain. There’s no way to fully describe that suffering in words,” he told the crowd that had gathered near the border on Wednesday.

The South Korean government never responded to this particular charge directly, although a special commission acknowledged violence at the prison in 2004. Mr Ahn’s direct allegations were investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea, an independent body investigating past human rights abuses, in 2009, which found that there had been a deliberate effort to force his conversion, which included acts of torture.

It has long been accepted in South Korea that such prisoners often encountered violence behind bars.

“Whenever I regained consciousness, the first thing I checked was my hands – to see if there was any red ink on them,” Mr Ahn recalled in his July interview.

That usually signalled that someone had forced a fingerprint onto a written oath of ideological conversion.

“If there wasn’t, I’d think, ‘No matter what they did, I won’. And I felt satisfied.”

The North has changed remarkably since Mr Ahn left. Kim Il-sung’s grandson now runs the country – a reclusive dictatorship that is richer than it was in 1950, but remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Mr Ahn was not in the North for the devastating famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands of others fled, making deadly journeys to escape their lives there.

Mr Ahn, however, dismissed the suggestion of any humanitarian concerns in the North, blaming the media for being biased and only reporting on the dark side of the country. He argues that North Korea is prospering and defends Kim’s decision to send troops to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The South has also changed in Mr Ahn’s time here – once a poor military dictatorship, it is now a wealthy, powerful democracy. Its relationship with the North has had its ups and downs, wavering between open hostility and hopeful engagement.

But Mr Ahn’s beliefs have not wavered. He has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to protesting a country that he believes is still colonising South Korea – the US.

“They say humans, unlike animals, have two kinds of life. One is basic biological life – the kind where we talk, eat, defecate, sleep, and so on. The second is political life, also called social life. If you strip a human being of their political life, they’re no different from a robot,” Mr Ahn told the BBC in July.

“I lived under Japanese colonial rule all those years. But I don’t want to be buried under [American] colonialism even in death.”

German prosecutors say a Ukrainian man has been arrested in Italy on suspicion of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea, several months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The man, identified only as Serhii K, was arrested in the province of Rimini and was part of a group who planted explosives under the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines from Russia to Germany, federal prosecutors say.

The blasts severed a key source of natural gas for Europe when leaders were facing an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war.

No-one admitted carrying out the attack, and Ukraine has denied involvement.

The Ukrainian, who was detained by Italy’s carabinieri military police stationed in the northern coastal resort of Misano Adriatico, is suspected of being one of the masterminds of the operation.

Prosecutors said he was part of a team that had chartered a yacht and sailed from the German port of Rostock to an area of the Baltic near the Danish island of Bornholm.

Although Nord Stream 2 never went into operation, Nord Stream 1’s two pipelines had provided a steady supply 1,200km (745 miles) under the Baltic from the Russian coast to north-eastern Germany.

Shortly before Russia’s invasion, Germany had cancelled its process to approve Nord Stream 2, which was 100% owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom. Months later, Russia shut down Nord Stream 1.

Then, on 26 September 2022, several explosions were recorded that ruptured three of the four pipelines.

Mystery surrounded the identity of the saboteurs, with Russia coming under Western suspicion and Moscow blaming the US and UK.

Last year German reports suggested a team of Ukrainian divers had hired a yacht and sailed out into the Baltic to attack the pipelines.

German prosecutors issued a warrant for the arrest of a diver named Volodymyr Z last August.

They said on Thursday that the suspect held in Rimini would be brought before an investigating judge after he was extradited from Italy.

The prosecutors said the man was “strongly suspected of jointly causing an explosion and of sabotage undermining the constitution”.

There is no evidence so far linking Ukraine, Russia or any other state to the attacks.

An appeals court has thrown out a $500m (£372m) penalty that President Donald Trump was ordered to pay in a New York civil fraud trial last year.

Judge Arthur Engoron had ordered Trump to pay the fee for massively inflating the value of the Trump Organization’s properties in order to secure favourable loans.

In the lengthy ruling released on Thursday, judges on the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division stated that while Trump was liable for the fraud, the fine of nearly half a billion dollars was excessive and probably violated constitutional protections against severe punishment.

In the case Judge Engoron had ordered Trump to pay $355m, but with interest, that grew to more than $500m.

“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award to the state,” wrote Judge Peter Moulton.

In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump claimed the decision was a “total victory”.

“I greatly respect the fact that the Court had the Courage to throw out this unlawful and disgraceful Decision that was hurting Business all throughout New York State,” he said. “It was a Political Witch Hunt, in a business sense, the likes of which no one has ever seen before.”

The New York Attorney General’s Office, which brought the case against Trump, also framed the decision as a win, as it upheld Trump’s fraud liability and the judges did not throw out other penalties that were not financial. The office plans to appeal against the decision on the fine to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

In a statement, the attorney general’s office said the judges “affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court: Donald Trump, his company, and two of his children are liable for fraud”.

“It should not be lost to history: yet another court has ruled that the president violated the law, and that our case has merit,” it also said.

In the case against Trump, his two adult sons, and the Trump Organization, Judge Engoron also banned Trump from serving as a company director or taking out loans from banks in the state for three years.

Thursday’s decision kept in place this and other nonmonetary penalties that Judge Engoron imposed.

The 323-page ruling, which included three lengthy opinions, revealed disagreement among the five judges on the panel.

They were primarily divided over the merits of the original lawsuit brought by Letitia James, who had accused Trump and his sons of “persistent and repeated fraud”.

While several judges said she was “within her lawful power in bringing this action”, one believed the case should have been dismissed and two said that there should be a new trial of a more limited scope.

Those two, though, joined the decision to throw out the fine “for the sole purpose of ensuring finality”, wrote Judge Moulton.

American voters had “obviously rendered a verdict” on Trump’s political career, Judge Moulton also wrote, and “this bench today unanimously derails the effort to destroy his business”.

The ruling came almost a year after the panel heard oral arguments on the appeal, during which several judges appeared skeptical of the civil fraud case.

Trump’s son, Eric Trump, who was involved in the case, celebrated the decision in a post on social media.

“After 5 years of hell, justice prevailed!” he wrote.

The ruling amounted to a “judicial version of kicking the can down the road”, said Will Thomas, an assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan.

“By its own admission, the Appellate Courts is punting the real legal decision up to the New York Court of Appeals, noting that its unusual decision was made ‘for the sole purpose of ensuring finality,'” he said.

“It’s hard to take any conclusions from this … except that we’ll have to continue to wait that much longer to find out the ultimate outcome in James v Trump.”

In September 2023, Judge Engoron ruled Trump was liable for business fraud, finding he had misrepresented his wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars. Another trial was held in 2024 to determine the penalty.

In one instance, the judge found Mr Trump’s financial statements had wrongly claimed that his Trump Tower penthouse was almost three times its actual size.

Trump had said that the case brought by James, a Democrat, was politically motivated.

Thursday’s unusually lengthy ruling also reflected the historic predicament of how to handle a massive fraud case involving a sitting president, said Mark Zauderer, a longtime appellate attorney in New York.

“Would you have a 300-page opinion if this were Joe Smith the businessman, and not Donald Trump?” Mr Zauderer asked.

Police in Brazil have accused former President Jair Bolsonaro, 70, and his 41-year-old son Eduardo of obstruction of justice.

They allege that the two tried to interfere in the trial currently under way against the elder Bolsonaro, in which he stands accused of leading an attempted coup after his defeat in the 2022 presidential election.

Police say they have found a document on Jair Bolsonaro’s mobile phone which suggests he planned to evade criminal proceedings by seeking asylum in Argentina.

They also accuse Eduardo Bolsonaro of lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of his father – which they say led to the US imposing punitive tariffs on Brazilian goods.

• Why Trump’s tariffs on Brazil are more about political retaliation than trade

The 170-page police report comes less than two weeks before the start of the final phase of the coup trial and piles further pressure on the former leader.

Jair Bolsonaro denies conspiring to overturn his 2022 election loss to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

But he has questioned the fairness of the proceedings against him, alleging he is the target of a “political witch hunt”.

He told news agency Reuters last month that he had “no doubt” the five Supreme Court justices tasked with delivering the verdict had already made up their mind about convicting him.

But at the time, he denied ever having made plans to try to evade the trial.

“I’ve never considered leaving the country, never,” he told Reuters, adding that he believed the coup charges were designed to “eliminate” him from running for president in 2026.

But in their report filed on Wednesday, police say they found a draft letter on Jair Bolsonaro’s mobile phone requesting political asylum in Argentina.

The 33-page letter was addressed directly to Argentine President Javier Milei, according to the report. Milei has condemned Bolsonaro’s “persecution” and is seen as a political ally of the former leader.

The letter is not dated but police say it was last modified on the phone in February 2024, shortly after Bolsonaro had to surrender his passport to police.

It is not clear whether the draft was ever sent and an Argentine government source has told Reuters that the office of the Argentine president had not received a letter from Bolsonaro.

But police argue the draft shows Bolsonaro’s intent to evade justice.

Alexandre de Moraes, the judge overseeing the Bolsonaro trial, has given the ex-president’s lawyers 48 hours to provide an explanation for the alleged asylum request.

Jair Bolsonaro is currently under house arrest and is already barred from posting on social media and from contacting his son Eduardo for breaching court restrictions placed on him.

The report also accuses Eduardo Bolsonaro of trying to influence his father’s trial by lobbying the Trump administration to lay pressure on the Brazilian government and the Supreme Court.

In July, Trump announced he would raise tariffs on Brazilian imports to 50%, citing Brazil’s treatment of Jair Bolsonaro as a trigger for the hike.

In addition to that, the US State Department banned eight Brazilian Supreme Court justices – including Alexandre de Moraes – from travelling to the US.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, who has been in the US for almost six months, took to social media on Wednesday to deny the allegations against him.

He said that his actions in the US had never been intended to influence any ongoing proceedings in Brazil and that his goal had been the “restoration of individual freedoms in the country”.

US celebrity judge and social media star Frank Caprio has died aged 88, his family has said.

Over a 40-year career in Rhode Island, he famously used compassion and humour to make judgements that took into consideration the personal circumstances of the people in the dock.

Videos of Judge Caprio presiding over cases on his hit TV show Caught in Providence have had billions of views on social media, earning him the title the “nicest judge in the world”.

His death following a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer was announced on his official Instagram account, where he was remembered for his “warmth” and “unwavering belief in the goodness of people”.

Judge Caprio had presided over thousands of cases in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, before embarking on a TV career.

His signature courtroom style produced viral clips ranging from him inviting children to sit with him behind the bench during cases, to announcing a “mini-judge” soft toy of himself.

A TikTok video showcasing his morning routine – brushing his teeth, signing his book and watching videos of his own show – has had more than 5m views.

In an 2019 interview, Judge Caprio said his courtroom proceedings “show a slice of life of Rhode Island that is very interesting, and it reflects the same issues people are experiencing nationwide”.

David Caprio, his son, thanked fans for their love and support and urged people to “spread a little kindness” in his father’s memory.

In an Instagram statement to his 3.4 million followers, Judge Caprio was remembered for the “countless acts of kindness he inspired”.

“His warmth, humour, and kindness left an indelible mark on all who knew him,” the statement said.

During its run, Caught in Providence was nominated for three Daytime Emmys, with Judge Caprio earning two of his own nominations last year.

The company behind it, Debmar-Mercury, paid tribute to Judge Caprio’s “unique brand of compassion and common sense approach”.

“We will miss him dearly,” co-presidents Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein said in a statement.

After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2023, Judge Caprio said he was “fully prepared to fight as hard I can” and thanked followers for their support.

In one of his last social media posts, Judge Caprio announced he was back in hospital after suffering a “setback” in his treatment and asked his followers for their prayers.

Judge Caprio is survived by his wife of nearly 60 years, Joyce Caprio, as well as their five children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The UK is among 27 countries backing a statement calling for Israel to allow immediate independent foreign media access to Gaza.

France, Germany, Australia, and Japan have also signed the text released by the Media Freedom Coalition – an intergovernmental group which advocates for the rights and protection of journalists globally.

The statement also condemned attacks on journalists, saying those working in Gaza must be protected.

International journalists have been banned by Israel from entering the Gaza Strip independently since the start of the war nearly two years ago. Some journalists have been taken into Gaza by the IDF under controlled access.

At least 192 journalists and media workers, the vast majority of them Palestinian, have been killed since then in the deadliest conflict for journalists ever documented, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Thursday’s statement, the first of its kind to be made jointly by countries, says their call is in light of “the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe”, adding they “oppose all attempts to restrict press freedom and block entry to journalists”.

It says that “deliberate targeting of journalists” is unacceptable, calling for all attacks to be investigated and followed up by prosecutions.

The latest such attack occurred earlier this month when four Al Jazeera journalists, including prominent reporter Anas al-Sharif, were killed in a targeted Israeli strike near Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

Sharif and another correspondent, Mohammed Qreiqeh, along with cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, were in a tent for journalists at the hospital’s main gate when it was struck, the broadcaster said at the time.

Two other freelance journalists were killed – Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed al-Khaldi.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted Sharif, alleging he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”.

However, the CPJ said Israel had failed to provide evidence to back up its allegations. Al Jazeera has also denied Israeli claims.

With no international journalists allowed into Gaza, local reporters have continued throughout the war to provide coverage directly on social media and working for Palestinian or international media organisations.

Israel’s High Court of Justice last year ruled that restrictions on entry were justified on security grounds. The Foreign Press Association, which represents journalists operating in Israel, has been petitioning the court to lift the ban, arguing that “unprecedented restrictions” had “hindered independent reporting”.

For the journalists still in Gaza, the situation is dire. As well as Israeli air strikes, many have faced the threat of starvation.

Last month, the BBC and three news agencies – Reuters, AP and AFP – issued a joint statement expressing “desperate concern” for journalists in the territory, who they say are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families.

More than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups have warned of mass starvation in Gaza.

Israel, which controls the entry of aid supplies into Gaza, has accused the charities of “serving the propaganda of Hamas”. But its own government figures show the amount of food it allowed into the territory between March and July was significantly below what the World Food Programme (WFP) says is needed for even basic assistance needs.

There are more fears about Palestinians after the Israeli military began the first stages of a planned ground offensive in Gaza City.

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

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

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

Giraffes are one of the world’s most distinct and well-loved creatures, always thought to be one species.

But now scientists at the International Union for Conservation of Nature say we can welcome three more species of the world’s tallest mammal.

It’s not the first time researchers have suggested there are four species of these giants strolling on our planet, but the latest assessment puts an official stamp on it.

How did scientists work it out? And what does it mean for the future of the animal?

Scientists compared the skull size and head shape of different giraffes and concluded there was enough genetic diversity for four groups to be considered as different species.

The researchers looked at natural features across Africa such as deserts, rivers and valleys that could have separated animals in the past, meaning they evolved separately from each other.

Say hello to the Southern giraffe, one of the newly-recognised species.

This giraffe lives in South Africa, Angola, southern Botswana, Namibia, southern Zimbabwe, Zambia, and southwestern Mozambique.

Two rivers (the Kunene and Zambezi) and rainforests in the Congo Basin probably separated the animals from overlapping with other giraffes.

The second new species is the Reticulated giraffe.

This giraffe lives in the open savannas and wooded grasslands of Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

Scientists think the Tana river, Ethiopia’s mountains and towns separated this animal from other giraffes in the north of the region.

It is also a migrating animal, which means it may have passed by other giraffes when it could have cross-bred.

The third species we can officially recognise is the Northern giraffe.

This animal lives in western Ethiopia, central and western Kenya, eastern South Sudan and Uganda.

Scientists say the Nile River and Lake Victoria, as well as its migration pattern, separated this giraffe from others.

The fourth and final species is the beautiful Masai giraffe, with its distinctive leaf-pattern hide.

It lives in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, separated from the Northern giraffe by Lake Victoria and the Nile River.

Although its pattern makes it seem like it could be a marker of being a separate species, the scientists say that the hides vary even within one population of giraffes and as the animals age.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says that identifying genetic difference is “vital” for conservation and managing giraffe populations.

“The more precisely we understand giraffe taxonomy, the better equipped we are to assess their status and implement effective conservation strategies,” said co-author of the report Michael Brown of the IUCN.

As a single species, the giraffe was classed as vulnerable to extinction, although some of the sub-species were increasing in numbers.

The IUCN will now re-assess the vulnerability of the four new species and their sub-species and says it hopes to better protect the majestic animals with the new information.

Hundreds of thousands of user conversations with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok have been exposed in search engine results – seemingly without users’ knowledge.

Unique links are created when Grok users press a button to share a transcript of their conversation – but as well as sharing the chat with the intended recipient, the button also appears to have made the chats searchable online.

A Google search on Thursday revealed it had indexed nearly 300,000 Grok conversations.

It has led one expert to describe AI chatbots as a “privacy disaster in progress”.

The BBC has approached X for comment.

The appearance of Grok chats in search engine results was first reported by tech industry publication Forbes, which counted more than 370,000 user conversations on Google.

Among chat transcripts seen by the BBC were examples of Musk’s chatbot being asked to create a secure password, provide meal plans for weight loss and answer detailed questions about medical conditions.

Some indexed transcripts also showed users’ attempts to test the limits on what Grok would say or do.

In one example seen by the BBC, the chatbot provided detailed instructions on how to make a Class A drug in a lab.

• Who is Elon Musk?
• What is AI and how do chatbots work?

It is not the first time that peoples’ conversations with AI chatbots have appeared more widely than they perhaps initially realised when using “share” functions.

OpenAI recently rowed back an “experiment” which saw ChatGPT conversations appear in search engine results when shared by users.

A spokesperson told BBC News at the time it had been “testing ways to make it easier to share helpful conversations, while keeping users in control”.

They said user chats were private by default and users had to explicitly opt-in to sharing them.

Earlier this year, Meta faced criticism after shared users conversations with its chatbot Meta AI appeared in a public “discover” feed on its app.

While users’ account details may be anonymised or obscured in shared chatbot transcripts, their prompts may still contain – and risk revealing – personal, sensitive information about someone.

Experts say this highlights mounting concerns over users’ privacy.

“AI chatbots are a privacy disaster in progress,” Prof Luc Rocher, associate professor at the Oxford Internet Institute, told the BBC.

They said “leaked conversations” from chatbots have divulged user information ranging from full names and location, to sensitive details about their mental health, business operations or relationships.

“Once leaked online, these conversations will stay there forever,” they added.

Meanwhile Carissa Veliz, associate professor in philosophy at Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics in AI, said users not being told shared chats would appear in search results is “problematic”.

“Our technology doesn’t even tell us what it’s doing with our data, and that’s a problem,” she said.

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India’s drive to blend more biofuels with petrol has helped the country cut millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and save precious dollar reserves.

But it has also sparked worries among vehicle owners and food policy experts about its potential impact on fuel efficiency and food security.

Last month, India achieved its objective of blending 20% ethanol with petrol, known as E20, five years ahead of its target.

The government views this as a game changer in reducing carbon emissions and trimming oil imports. Since 2014, ethanol blending has helped India cut 69.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and saved 1.36 trillion rupees ($15.5 bn; £11.5 bn) in foreign exchange.

A study by Delhi-based think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) shows that carbon dioxide emissions from road transport in India will nearly double by 2050.

“The demand for fuel is only going to increase and shifting to ethanol-blended petrol is absolutely necessary to cut down emissions,” Sandeep Theng from the Indian Federation of Green Energy, an organisation that promotes green energy, told the BBC.

But many vehicles in India are not E20-compliant, making their owners sceptical about the benefits of the policy.

Hormazd Sorabjee, editor of Autocar India magazine, said that ethanol has a “lower energy density than petrol and is more corrosive”. This results in lower mileage and exposes certain vehicle parts to a greater risk of wear and tear.

Mr Sorabjee added that some manufacturers like Honda have been using E20 compliant material since 2009, but many older vehicles on Indian roads are not E20 compatible.

While there is no official data on the impact of of E20 fuel on engines, consumers routinely share anecdotes about their vehicle’s deteriorating mileage on social media.

Many standard insurance policies in India also don’t provide cover for damage due to the use of non-compliant fuel, a top executive at online insurance platform Policybazaar, who wanted to stay anonymous, told the BBC.

“Consumers need to take add-on policies but even those claims can be denied or downgraded based on fine print of the policy,” he added.

The federal petroleum ministry has described these concerns as “largely unfounded”.

In a post on X, the ministry said that engine tuning and E20-compatible materials could minimise the drop in mileage. It also advised replacing certain parts in older vehicles, saying the process was inexpensive and “easily done during regular servicing of the vehicle”.

Mr Sorabjee told the BBC that while mileage concerns are real, they are “not always as bad as made out to be”.

The bigger concern, he said, was the potential damage to vehicle materials due to the corrosive properties of E20.

Some vehicle manufacturers are offering ways to mitigate this.

Maruti Suzuki, India’s biggest four-wheeler maker, is reportedly likely to introduce an E20 material kit that could cost up to 6,000 rupees ($69; £51). The kit will reportedly replace components like fuel lines, seals and gaskets. Bajaj, a leading Indian two-wheeler maker, has advised using a fuel cleaner that could cost around 100 rupees ($1.15; £0.85) for a full tank of petrol.

But not all vehicle-owners are convinced. Amit Pandhi, who has owned a Maruti Suzuki car in Delhi since 2017, is unhappy that petrol pumps don’t offer the choice to opt for a blend other than E20.

“Why should I be forced to buy petrol that offers less mileage and then spend more to make the materials compliant?” he asked.

In 2021, a document on India’s transition to E20 published by Niti Aayog, a government think tank, had highlighted some of these concerns. It recommended tax benefits for buying E20 compliant vehicles, along with a lower retail price for the fuel.

The government has defended its decision to not pass the recommendations, saying that at the time of the report’s release, ethanol was cheaper than petrol.

“Over time, procurement price of ethanol has increased and now the weighted average price of ethanol is higher than cost of refined petrol,” the petroleum ministry said earlier this month.

It’s not just consumers – the government’s blended fuel push has also raised concern among climate researchers and food policy experts.

Ethanol is produced from crops like sugarcane and maize, and expanding its use means diverting farm produce into manufacturing more fuel.

In 2025, India would need 10 billion litres of ethanol to meet its E20 requirements, according to government estimates. The demand will balloon to 20 billion litres by 2050, according to Bengaluru-based think tank Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP).

Right now, sugarcane is used to produce about 40% of India’s ethanol.

This puts India in a bind. It has to choose between continuing its reliance on sugarcane – which has a higher yield for ethanol but is water-intensive – or using food crops like maize and rice to produce the fuel.

But the shift comes with its own challenges.

In 2024, for the first time in decades, India became a net importer of maize, using large amounts of the crop to make ethanol.

Ramya Natarajan, a research scientist at CSTEP, said the diversion of produce had a significant impact on the poultry sector, which now has to spend more to buy corn for feedstock.

Moreover, this year, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) approved an unprecedented allocation of 5.2 million tonnes of rice for ethanol production. The rice in FCI stocks is earmarked to be given to India’s poor at a subsidised rate.

The policy could lead to an “agriculture disaster in a couple of years”, said Devinder Sharma, a farming sector expert.

“In a country like India, where 250 million people go hungry, we cannot use food to feed the cars,” Mr Sharma said.

To meet the demand for ethanol through corn and sugarcane in a 50-50 ratio – as outlined by Niti Aayog – India would have to bring in an additional eight million hectares of land under maize cultivation by 2030, unless there is a drastic increase in yield, according to CSTEP.

But even that could lead to problems.

“If farmers replace rice or wheat cultivation with maize, that would be sustainable because we have enough surplus of these crops. But we need other crops like oilseeds and pulses too,” Ms Natarajan said.

Ms Natarajan added that continuing with the E10 blend – petrol mixed with 10% ethanol – would have been a more ideal choice.

India, however, is planning to go even beyond E20.

“The country will now gradually scale towards E25, E27, and E30 in a phased, calibrated manner,” Petroleum Minister Hardeep Puri said recently.

Ambitious plans for a bilateral summit between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin appear to be stalling, only days after Donald Trump expressed confidence that such a meeting could take place within weeks.

Locations from Geneva and Vienna to Budapest or Istanbul have all been mooted as possible venues. Putin and Zelensky have not been in the same room since 2019, three years before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The US president said he had “begun arrangements” for the summit, indicating he believed Putin had agreed to it over the phone on Monday.

This may have been an optimistic reading of the conversation.

Almost at once, the Kremlin shared its own, more vague version of the exchange. Trump and Putin had discussed “the possibility of raising the level of representatives” – said aide Yuri Ushakov – and that could simply mean that ministers, instead of envoys, may take part in the talks.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that a meeting could happen “within the next two weeks”. But, he cautioned, “we don’t know whether the Russian president will have the courage to attend such a summit” and he pushed for Putin to be “persuaded”.

Trump mentioned a “rough” situation for Russia, should Putin not co-operate in the peace process, but declined to be more specific.

Now, as the diplomatic whirlwind dies down, the likelihood of a meeting between Putin and Zelensky seems to be further diminishing.

On the surface, Moscow appears to be open to taking part in bilateral talks between the two presidents. In reality, though, the preconditions it is attaching to a meeting will almost certainly prove unacceptable to the Ukrainian side.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that Putin was ready to meet Zelensky provided that all “issues” that required consideration “at the highest level” were worked out. This vague yet uncompromising language has been used by the Kremlin in the past to resist Ukrainian proposals for a bilateral meeting.

Last week Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said that Russia had accepted security guarantees for Ukraine, calling it “a very significant step”.

But it now appears that the guarantees in question would be modelled on those first floated by Moscow and rejected by Kyiv in 2022, which would see Russia join a group of countries wielding a power of veto over military intervention in defence of Ukraine.

That proposal would also see a ban on Western troops being stationed in Ukraine, effectively leaving it defenceless in the event of a fresh Russian invasion. Lavrov said on Thursday that any other security framework would be “an absolutely futile undertaking”.

Zelensky, meanwhile, has said any meeting with Putin would need to come after Kyiv’s allies agreed on security guarantees – which would undoubtedly involve the support of Western forces and exclude Russia, making it the kind that Moscow would never accept.

As things stand, neither Russia nor Ukraine seem ready to budge from their long-held positions – and each is accusing the other of undermining efforts to reach a peace deal.

The possibility of a Putin-Zelensky summit may for the moment seem remote, but that has not stopped speculation about where it might take place.

In the aftermath of the diplomatic frenzy that followed the talks at the White House, Budapest was mentioned as a location for a potential meeting and the Americans were said to be in favour of it.

“They can come to Hungary at any time,” said Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Sizjjarto. “Give us an hour’s notice beforehand, and we are ready to guarantee fair, decent, safe, and equal conditions for everyone in Hungary.”

But not everybody sees the Hungarian capital as sufficiently neutral ground. Prime Minister Viktor Orban is one of the few European leaders who has maintained ties with Putin. He has also blocked funding for Ukraine and has pledged to veto Ukrainian membership to the EU.

“Let’s be honest, Budapest did not support us,” Zelensky said on Thursday. “I’m not saying that Orban’s policy was against Ukraine, but it was against supporting Ukraine,” he told reporters, adding that holding talks in Budapest would be “challenging”.

On Wednesday Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk posted on X that he was opposed to Budapest hosting talks. The city was the location of a 1994 summit that resulted in Kyiv surrendering its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in return for Russian security assurances. Those were later rendered meaningless by Moscow’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 full-scale invasion.

“Maybe I’m superstitious, but this time I would try to find another place,” quipped Tusk.

France’s Emmanuel Macron raised the possibility of the summit being held in Switzerland – a militarily neutral European country with a long history of hosting high-stakes talks. Zelensky also mooted Vienna, the seat of several international organisations.

In 2023 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Putin alleging war crimes in Ukraine but Switzerland and Austria – both ICC signatories – have said they would grant immunity to the Russian president if he came for peace talks.

Turkey too has been floated as an option.

There is a precedent, as Istanbul has already hosted three rounds of direct delegation-level talks between Ukraine and Russia since April, although they failed to result in any meaningful progress towards a ceasefire beyond an agreement on exchanging prisoners of war.

The Vatican and Saudi Arabia were also mentioned by Ukraine as possible locations. The Vatican has long put itself forward as a suitable venue, while Saudi Arabia has previously brokered prisoner exchanges between Kyiv and Moscow.

Away from high-level diplomacy, the war shows no sign of abating.

On Thursday Ukraine said its armed forces had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region, which borders Ukraine’s eastern regions of the Donbas.

Russia, meanwhile, launched its biggest wave of strikes on Ukraine for weeks, killing one person and wounding many more.

“There is still no signal from Moscow that they are truly going to engage in meaningful negotiations and end this war,” Zelensky said on social media. “Pressure is needed.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cambodia took the dispute to the ICJ, and won.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week saw President Donald Trump rule out sending US troops to Ukraine as part of a security deal, a council winning a legal challenge over asylum hotels and a shower gel advert being banned.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz collated by Grace Dean and George Sandeman.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

The Philippines’ beloved fast-food chain Jollibee said fraudsters rigged the results of its online raffle, following complaints from customers and a brief government investigation.

Jollibee said “fraudulent third parties” placed multiple entries “despite existing safeguards” for a chance to win food items and concert tickets.

The company said it complied with the government investigation and that the situation had been corrected.

Many social media users were in disbelief when the winners’ names were posted on Jollibee’s Facebook page last week. They said names like Hobby Dynamics, Noble Beer and Alfreda Corkery could have been made up using AI.

Jollibee said it “immediately implemented corrective measures” and disqualified the “invalid major prize winners”. It also suspended succeeding draws and said a re-draw would be held.

“We want to assure everyone that we have fully addressed the issues raised and strictly complied with the investigation initiated by the Department of Trade and Industry,” Jollibee said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The names on the winners’ list baffled social media users as they are uncommon in the country. Filipino first and last names are a mix of English and Spanish inherited from its former colonisers the US and Spain.

The names also include Belle Thompson, Arielle Wintheiser and Gilda Block.

“LIKE SERIOUSLLLLLY?!?!” one Facebook user commented. “Your AI must be too lazy to come up with these kinds of names”.

“They probably thought people didn’t have time to read,” another wrote.

Some drew comparisons to a corruption controversy involving Vice-President Sara Duterte, whose office allegedly paid government funds to individuals with fictitious-sounding names.

The Department of Trade and Industry said on Wednesday that it would “continue to oversee the resumption of the Jollibee Burger Blowout Promo”, ensuring “fairness and transparency in all promotional undertakings”.

Jollibee started as an ice cream shop in the 1970s before opening its first burger restaurant in downtown Manila in the early 1980s. It has expanded its business rapidly in the last five years, acquiring US cafe chain The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and Michelin-starred Hong Kong dimsum chain Tim Ho Wan.

Its founder, Tony Tan Caktiong, is the son of poor immigrants from southern China. The chain’s mascot, a perpetually smiling bee with a red jacket, is a nod to Filipinos’ hardworking nature.

Generations of Filipinos see the brand as a part of their national identity, with its signature fried chicken, burgers and spaghetti becoming a staple for family gatherings.

In 2014, a shortage of its Chickenjoy fried chicken led to the #ChickenSad trend on social media.

Jollibee has 1,600 stores in 17 countries, including the UK, the US, Spain and Singapore.

A rainbow crosswalk honouring the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida, Orlando, has been painted over by the state’s department of transportation.

The crosswalk was part of a larger memorial to the 49 people who were killed after a gunman opened fire at the gay nightclub in June 2016, in what was then the largest mass shooting in US history.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said he was “devastated” by its removal, calling it a “cruel political act” on social media.

“This crosswalk not only enhanced safety and visibility for the large number of pedestrians visiting the memorial, it also served as a visual reminder of Orlando’s commitment to honour the 49 lives taken,” he said.

Carlos Guillermo Smith, an openly gay state senator, said that the Florida department of Transportation had “ripped the rainbow colours off of this city crosswalk” in the middle of the night.

In a video on X where he is standing in front of the repainted crosswalk, he said the department had “illegally vandalised city property without providing the city of Orlando notice or getting their approval”.

“I cannot believe that the [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis administration has engaged in this hostile act against the city of Orlando,” he said.

In his response to the video, DeSantis wrote on X: “We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes”.

The BBC reached out to Governor DeSantis’ office, who declined to comment and pointed to the governor’s post on X.

Ron DeSantis, a well-known Republican figure who ran for president in 2024, has been criticised for his perceived stance against LGBTQ issues in the past.

In 2023, he pushed for the expansion of the controversial so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida, barring public schools from teaching about sexual education and gender identity.

In recent months, Florida’s transportation agency has been notifying cities that they risk losing transportation funds unless they remove rainbow-coloured crosswalks.

In June, the agency posted a memo on X prohibiting pavement or surface art associated with “social, political or ideological messages or images”, adding that they “do not serve the purpose of traffic control”.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to all 50 states in July urging them to remove political statements from the roads.

“Political banners have no place on public roads,” he said in a social media post. “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.”

A US woman at the centre of a failed assassination attempt in the UK has been jailed for 30 years.

Aimee Betro, from West Allis in Wisconsin, was hired as a killer as part of a plot to attack a British family in Birmingham, before going on the run for nearly five years.

She approached her victim during the attempt, in September 2019, only for her gun to jam when she pulled the trigger.

The 45-year-old was found guilty of conspiracy to murder, possessing a self-loading pistol with intent to cause fear of violence and illegally importing ammunition after a trial at Birmingham Crown Court.

In sentencing, Judge Simon Drew KC said Betro played a “leading role” in the assassination attempt, which was carried out alongside Mohammed Aslam and his son Mohammed Nazir.

The two men, from Derby, were jailed for 10 and 32 years respectively for their roles in the plot last year.

The judge said the trio had planned the attempted killing after Nazir and Aslam were injured during a fight at Aslat Mahumad’s clothing boutique in July 2018.

On 7 September 2019, Betro had parked up outside the house of Birmingham businessman Mr Mahumad and tried to shoot his son Sikander Ali, but the gun jammed.

She returned to the same location hours later, firing three shots into the upstairs window of the South Yardley home.

“You went beyond simply reaching an agreement to kill and, in reality, you did intend to kill Mr Ali,” Judge Drew said.

“It is only a matter of chance that Mr Ali wasn’t killed.

“You were engaged in a complex, well-planned conspiracy to murder.

“You were prepared to pull the trigger and did so on two separate occasions.”

During the trial, jurors were told that Betro, a childhood development and graphic design graduate, met Nazir on a dating app.

The pair formed a close online friendship through text messages and video calls before she visited the UK twice in December 2018 and May 2019.

The court heard that Betro again travelled to Birmingham in August 2019, at which point she had fallen in love with Nazir and as a result had agreed to carry out the killing.

On the day of the attack, Betro bought a second-hand Mercedes under the name Becky Booth before scoping out Measham Grove where the target lived.

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

She approached Mr Ali and attempted to shoot him from behind, but the gun malfunctioned, allowing him to get back into his car and flee.

Betro escaped but later returned to the road in a taxi before shooting three times at the property.

She then travelled to Manchester Airport where she flew back to the US, the court heard.

Following the sentencing, Det Ch Insp, Alastair Orencas of West Midlands Police, said: “This is a unique case which has involved a huge amount of work tracing the movements of Betro from her arrival into the UK, her subsequent failed attempt to shoot a man dead, and her departure from the UK.

“It’s by luck that her attempt to kill her target failed, thanks to the jamming of her gun.

“An incredible amount of work went into building up a really detailed picture of her activities while in the UK.

“We worked really closely with partners such as the Armenian Government, (NCA), FBI, Crown Prosecution Service and Derbyshire Constabulary to bring Betro back to the UK to face justice. I’d like to thank all of them for helping to achieve justice.”

Pope Leo XIV is preparing to travel to Lebanon later this year, in what could be his first journey abroad since being elected head of the Catholic Church in May.

Archbishop Paul Sayah, deputy to Lebanon’s highest-ranking Catholic leader, told the BBC the Vatican was “studying” the trip but that the church was still waiting for official dates.

The visit would mark a significant moment for the first American Pope, who has repeatedly urged peace in the Middle East and interfaith co-existence.

“Lebanon is a multicultural, multi-religious country and is a place of dialogue,” Bishop Sayah said.

“It’s one of the rare environments where Muslims and Christians are living together and respecting each other… so it sends a message to the region.”

There has been speculation over Leo’s first international destination, as early papal trips often define the tone of a pontificate.

The late Pope Francis’s first major journey outside Rome, to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2013, set the stage for his focus on migration and marginalised communities.

In recent decades, overseas travel has become central to the papacy, allowing popes to connect with Catholics worldwide, spread their message and engage in diplomacy.

During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis visited 68 countries on 47 foreign trips, often choosing destinations on the world’s margins, which he described as the Church’s “peripheries”.

Lebanon, home to more than two million Catholics and known for its religious diversity, has long carried symbolic weight for the Church. A papal stop there would also place Leo near the war in Gaza and the wider Israel-Palestine conflict.

“Everybody is talking to Israel but Israel doesn’t listen. Netanyahu doesn’t seem to listen a lot, but the more [leaders speak], the better,” Bishop Sayah said.

“If the Pope adds his voice and concern, I think it’s likely to have some impact.”

Pope Leo has already drawn attention to outreach efforts with other faiths.

One of his first meetings after his election was with an interreligious delegation, where he praised the “Jewish roots of Christianity” and honored the “growing commitment to dialogue and fraternity” between Catholics and Muslims. He has repeatedly urged Christians, Jews, and Muslims to “say no to war and yes to peace”.

If the trip goes ahead, it would follow visits by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both remembered for messages of peace and religious co-existence.

Earlier this month, Pope Leo also marked the fifth anniversary of the Beirut port explosion, which killed 200 people and caused billions in damage.

“Beloved and suffering Lebanon remains at the centre of our prayers,” he said.

India’s aviation safety regulator is grappling with a staffing crisis that is severely affecting its ability to fulfil its mandate, a parliamentary panel has warned in a new report.

The “profound and persistent shortage” of personnel at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) poses an “existential threat” to the integrity of the safety system, says the report, tabled in the upper house of parliament on Wednesday.

The lawmakers were tasked with reviewing aviation safety in the aftermath of the 12 June Air India plane crash which killed 260 people, mostly passengers.

The report doesn’t mention the crash, but flags several other concerns including overworked air traffic controllers.

The BBC has contacted the DGCA and the civil aviation ministry for comment.

Parliamentary committee reports are not binding on the federal government but they have in the past influenced legislative agendas and sometimes regulations.

India, the world’s third-largest aviation market, has seen a massive boom in air travel in recent years, driven by budget airlines, rising disposable incomes and a government push to expand connectivity through new airports.

But the growth has been accompanied by major challenges, including shortage of qualified personnel, fatigue among existing staff and infrastructural constraints.

Since the Air India crash, there has been heightened scrutiny on both the airline and the larger aviation sector in India. In July, the BBC spoke to the chief of the DGCA after a spate of reports of maintenance oversights and training shortfalls raised concerns.

“If you look at global safety metrics, such as those published by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which track the number of accidents per million flights, India consistently performs better than the world average,” he said, adding that the country exceeded the global average only during two years between 2010 and 2024.

• Are India’s skies safe? Air safety watchdog responds amid rising concerns
• Air India watchdog audit reveals 51 safety violations

The parliamentary committee, comprising lawmakers from both the governing and opposition parties, listed a string of systemic vulnerabilities in India’s aviation sector and recommended reforms.

It said that the DGCA, “in its current form, is not in a position to discharge its duties for which it was established” because of a severe staffing crunch.

Only 553 out of 1,063 posts have been filled, a shortfall of almost 50%. Earlier this month, the civil aviation ministry had addressed the shortage in parliament, saying that it had “not impacted the functioning of DGCA”.

The committee also called the regulator’s hiring model “slow and inflexible”, saying it hindered its ability to attract skilled talent.

The panel suggested the regulator should be granted “full financial and administrative autonomy” to address these problems.

It also flagged other challenges, including fatigue among air traffic controllers (ATCs).

It said the aviation boom had put controllers under “immense pressure,” particularly at metropolitan airports, where many of them operate under “prolonged and fatiguing duty schedules”.

The report further warned that some ATC staff were insufficiently trained and noted that “the current mismatch between recruitment and training capacity, coupled with operational overload, poses a direct and ongoing threat to airspace safety”.

While detailing other systemic vulnerabilities, the report suggested mandating detailed root-cause analyses for every runway incursion and other recurring high-risk events, like bird hits.

A runway incursion, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration, involves the “incorrect presence of an aircraft, vehicle or person on the protected area of a surface designated for the landing and take off of aircraft”. The report calls these incursions “high-consequence events” that pose a direct risk of collision.

According to the report, out of every one million movements on the runway in 2024, there were 14.12 incursions, much higher than the target of 9.78.

The panel also stressed on the need to improve error reporting systems.

It said that the civil aviation ministry, along with the DGCA, should align existing provisions with Just Culture – a growing understanding in the aviation sector which balances the need for accountability with the understanding that human error is inevitable.

It added that even though the DGCA has a confidential system to report errors there is a “need for clearer protections”.

The committee spoke to officials in the federal civil aviation ministry, the aviation regulator, and industry experts from the country and globally.

Japanese police have said that an elderly man who they had believed was killed by a bear had in fact been stabbed to death by his son.

Fujiyuki Shindo, 51, was arrested in the northern Akita prefecture on Tuesday for allegedly murdering his 93-year-old father Fujiyoshi, local media reports.

Police sent out a bear attack warning mail after the victim’s wife found him collapsed and bleeding on the floor. But it was withdrawn after investigators concluded the wounds were more consistent with knife injuries.

Bear sightings are increasingly common in northern Japan, where ageing populations and shrinking farmlands have meant the animals are expanding their habitat closer to human populations.

Mr Shindo, who lived with his parents, had initially told police that he did not notice anything unusual at home during the time of the attack, agency Kyodo News reported.

Investigators seized several knives from the family’s home and were trying to identify the murder weapon, Jiji Press reported.

They have not given out a motive for the murder.

Bears were initially blamed for Fujiyoshi Shindo’s death because Japan has seen a rising number of bear attacks in recent years. In the 12 months to March 2024, a record 219 people were attacked by bears – and six of them died, Japan’s Environment Ministry said.

In July, a newspaper deliveryman was killed by a brown bear in a residential area.

The rise in bear encounters have also prompted authorities to relax hunting laws to make it easier for people to shoot bears.

Thousands of bears have recently been trapped and killed by hunters.

An appeals court has thrown out a $500m (£372m) penalty that President Donald Trump was ordered to pay in a New York civil fraud trial last year.

Judge Arthur Engoron had ordered Trump to pay the fee for massively inflating the value of the Trump Organization’s properties in order to secure favourable loans.

In the lengthy ruling released on Thursday, judges on the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division stated that while Trump was liable for the fraud, the fine of nearly half a billion dollars was excessive and probably violated constitutional protections against severe punishment.

In the case Judge Engoron had ordered Trump to pay $355m, but with interest, that grew to more than $500m.

“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award to the state,” wrote Judge Peter Moulton.

In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump claimed the decision was a “total victory”.

“I greatly respect the fact that the Court had the Courage to throw out this unlawful and disgraceful Decision that was hurting Business all throughout New York State,” he said. “It was a Political Witch Hunt, in a business sense, the likes of which no one has ever seen before.”

The New York Attorney General’s Office, which brought the case against Trump, also framed the decision as a win, as it upheld Trump’s fraud liability and the judges did not throw out other penalties that were not financial. The office plans to appeal against the decision on the fine to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

In a statement, the attorney general’s office said the judges “affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court: Donald Trump, his company, and two of his children are liable for fraud”.

“It should not be lost to history: yet another court has ruled that the president violated the law, and that our case has merit,” it also said.

In the case against Trump, his two adult sons, and the Trump Organization, Judge Engoron also banned Trump from serving as a company director or taking out loans from banks in the state for three years.

Thursday’s decision kept in place this and other nonmonetary penalties that Judge Engoron imposed.

The 323-page ruling, which included three lengthy opinions, revealed disagreement among the five judges on the panel.

They were primarily divided over the merits of the original lawsuit brought by Letitia James, who had accused Trump and his sons of “persistent and repeated fraud”.

While several judges said she was “within her lawful power in bringing this action”, one believed the case should have been dismissed and two said that there should be a new trial of a more limited scope.

Those two, though, joined the decision to throw out the fine “for the sole purpose of ensuring finality”, wrote Judge Moulton.

American voters had “obviously rendered a verdict” on Trump’s political career, Judge Moulton also wrote, and “this bench today unanimously derails the effort to destroy his business”.

The ruling came almost a year after the panel heard oral arguments on the appeal, during which several judges appeared skeptical of the civil fraud case.

Trump’s son, Eric Trump, who was involved in the case, celebrated the decision in a post on social media.

“After 5 years of hell, justice prevailed!” he wrote.

The ruling amounted to a “judicial version of kicking the can down the road”, said Will Thomas, an assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan.

“By its own admission, the Appellate Courts is punting the real legal decision up to the New York Court of Appeals, noting that its unusual decision was made ‘for the sole purpose of ensuring finality,'” he said.

“It’s hard to take any conclusions from this … except that we’ll have to continue to wait that much longer to find out the ultimate outcome in James v Trump.”

In September 2023, Judge Engoron ruled Trump was liable for business fraud, finding he had misrepresented his wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars. Another trial was held in 2024 to determine the penalty.

In one instance, the judge found Mr Trump’s financial statements had wrongly claimed that his Trump Tower penthouse was almost three times its actual size.

Trump had said that the case brought by James, a Democrat, was politically motivated.

Thursday’s unusually lengthy ruling also reflected the historic predicament of how to handle a massive fraud case involving a sitting president, said Mark Zauderer, a longtime appellate attorney in New York.

“Would you have a 300-page opinion if this were Joe Smith the businessman, and not Donald Trump?” Mr Zauderer asked.

On a blistering morning earlier this week, an unusually large crowd had gathered at Imjingang Station – the last stop on Seoul’s metropolitan subway line that inches the closest to North Korea.

There were dozens of activists and police officers, their attention fixed on one man: Ahn Hak-sop, a 95-year-old former North Korean prisoner of war who was making his way home, to the other side of the border that divides the Korean peninsula.

It was what Mr Ahn called his final journey – he wanted to return to the North to be buried there, after spending most of his life in South Korea, much of it against his will.

He never made it across: he was turned away, as was expected because the South Korean government had said they did not have enough time to make the necessary arrangements.

But Mr Ahn came as close as he could.

Weakened by pulmonary oedema (a build up of fluid on the lungs), he could not manage the 30 minute walk from the station to the Unification Bridge – or Tongil Dae-gyo – one of the few passageways connecting South Korea to the North.

So he stepped out of the car roughly 200 metres from the bridge and walked the final stretch on foot, flanked by two supporters who steadied him.

He returned holding a North Korean flag, a sight rarely seen and deeply jarring in the South, and addressed the reporters and 20 or so volunteers who had turned up in support.

“I just want my body to rest in a truly independent land,” he said. “A land free from imperialism.”

Ahn Hak-sop was 23 when he was captured by the South Koreans.

Three years earlier, he had been in high school when then-North Korean ruler Kim Il-sung attacked the South. Kim, who wanted to reunify the two Koreas, rallied his countrymen by claiming that the South had initiated the 1950 attack.

Ahn was among those who believed this. He joined the North Korean People’s Army in 1952 as a liaison officer, and was then assigned a unit that was sent to the South.

He was captured in April 1953, three months before the armistice, and sentenced to life in prison the same year. He was released more than 42 years later because of a special pardon on the Korean independence day.

Like many other North Korean prisoners, Mr Ahn too was labelled a “redhead”, a reference to his communist sympathies, and he struggled to find a proper job.

It wasn’t easy, he told the BBC in an earlier interview in July. The government didn’t help much at first, he said, agents followed him for years. He married, and even fostered a child, but he never felt he truly belonged.

Throughout, he made his home in a small village in Gimpo, the closest a civilian can live to the border with the North.

Yet in 2000, he turned down the chance to be sent back to the North along with dozens of other prisoners who also wanted to return.

He had been optimistic then that ties between the two sides would improve, that their people would be able to travel back and forth freely.

But he chose to stay because he feared leaving would be a win for the Americans.

“At the time, they were pushing for US military governance [in the South],” he said.

“If I returned to the North, it would’ve felt like I was just handing over my own bedroom to the Americans – vacating it for them. My conscience as a human being just couldn’t allow that.”

It’s not clear what he was referring to other than growing ties between Seoul and Washington, which includes a strong military alliance which guarantees South Korea protection from any attack from the North.

That relationship deeply bothers Mr Ahn, who has never stopped believing the Kim family’s propaganda – that the only thing stopping the reunification of the Korean peninsula was an “imperialist America” and a South Korean government that was beholden to them.

Born in 1930 in Ganghwa County, Gyeonggi Province, during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, Mr Ahn was the youngest of three brothers. He also had two younger sisters.

Patriotism took root early. His grandfather refused to let him attend school because he “didn’t want to make me Japanese”, he recalled. So he started school later than usual, after his grandfather died.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, bringing an end to World War Two and its colonisation of Korea, Mr Ahn and his younger brother, who had deserted the Japanese military, were hiding at their aunt’s house at the foot of Mount Mani on Ganghwa Island.

“That wasn’t liberation – it was just a transfer of colonial rule,” he said.

“A leaflet [we saw] said that Korea wasn’t being liberated, but that US military rule would be implemented instead. It even said that if anyone violated US military law, they would be strictly punished under military law.”

As the Soviet Union and the US tussled over the Korean peninsula, they agreed to to divide it. The Soviets took control of the North and the US, the South, where they set up a military administration until 1948.

When Kim attacked in 1950, a South Korean government was in place – but Mr Ahn, like so many North Koreans, believes the South provoked the conflict and that its alliance with Washington prevented reunification.

Once he was captured, Mr Ahn had several chances to avoid prison – he was asked to sign documents renouncing the North and its communist ideology, which was called “conversion”. But he refused.

“Because I refused to sign a written oath of conversion, I had to endure endless humiliation, torture, and violence – days filled with shame and pain. There’s no way to fully describe that suffering in words,” he told the crowd that had gathered near the border on Wednesday.

The South Korean government never responded to this particular charge directly, although a special commission acknowledged violence at the prison in 2004. Mr Ahn’s direct allegations were investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea, an independent body investigating past human rights abuses, in 2009, which found that there had been a deliberate effort to force his conversion, which included acts of torture.

It has long been accepted in South Korea that such prisoners often encountered violence behind bars.

“Whenever I regained consciousness, the first thing I checked was my hands – to see if there was any red ink on them,” Mr Ahn recalled in his July interview.

That usually signalled that someone had forced a fingerprint onto a written oath of ideological conversion.

“If there wasn’t, I’d think, ‘No matter what they did, I won’. And I felt satisfied.”

The North has changed remarkably since Mr Ahn left. Kim Il-sung’s grandson now runs the country – a reclusive dictatorship that is richer than it was in 1950, but remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Mr Ahn was not in the North for the devastating famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands of others fled, making deadly journeys to escape their lives there.

Mr Ahn, however, dismissed the suggestion of any humanitarian concerns in the North, blaming the media for being biased and only reporting on the dark side of the country. He argues that North Korea is prospering and defends Kim’s decision to send troops to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The South has also changed in Mr Ahn’s time here – once a poor military dictatorship, it is now a wealthy, powerful democracy. Its relationship with the North has had its ups and downs, wavering between open hostility and hopeful engagement.

But Mr Ahn’s beliefs have not wavered. He has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to protesting a country that he believes is still colonising South Korea – the US.

“They say humans, unlike animals, have two kinds of life. One is basic biological life – the kind where we talk, eat, defecate, sleep, and so on. The second is political life, also called social life. If you strip a human being of their political life, they’re no different from a robot,” Mr Ahn told the BBC in July.

“I lived under Japanese colonial rule all those years. But I don’t want to be buried under [American] colonialism even in death.”

Millie Bobby Brown has announced she and husband Jake Bongiovi have adopted a baby daughter.

The 21-year-old star of Stranger Things and Enola Holmes posted a message on Instagram saying: “This summer, we welcomed our sweet baby girl through adoption.

“We are beyond excited to embark on this beautiful next chapter of parenthood in both peace and privacy.”

It ended: “And then there were 3. Love, Millie and Jake Bongiovi.” The couple didn’t reveal the name of their new addition.

The news comes 15 months after the actress married Bongiovi, the 23-year-old son of rock singer Jon Bon Jovi.

At the end of last year, she finished filming the final season of Stranger Things, one of the most popular shows in Netflix’s history.

The supernatural drama gave Brown her breakthrough at the age of 12, and will conclude when season five is released at the end of 2025.

She finished shooting a third Enola Holmes film at the end of June, and has also starred in Netflix’s Damsel and The Electric State, as well as two Godzilla films.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has instructed negotiations to begin for the release of all remaining hostages and an end to the war in Gaza on terms “acceptable to Israel”.

Netanyahu told Israeli troops on Thursday night that his cabinet had also approved plans for a massive assault on Gaza City in the north of the territory, despite widespread international and domestic opposition.

Hamas agreed to a proposal drawn up by Qatari and Egyptian mediators for a 60-day ceasefire on Monday, which according to Qatar would see the release of half of the remaining hostages in Gaza.

But responding for the first time, Netanyahu has not accepted the deal currently on the table.

Israeli media has cited an Israeli official as saying negotiators will be dispatched for renewed talks once a location has been determined.

In a video statement during a visit with the Gaza division’s headquarters in Israel on Thursday night, Netanyahu said he had “instructed to immediately begin negotiations for the release of all our hostages”.

“I have come to approve the IDF’s (Israel Defense Forces) plans to take control of Gaza City and defeat Hamas,” he said.

“These two matters – defeating Hamas and releasing all our hostages – go hand in hand,” Netanyahu added, without providing details about what the next stage of talks would entail.

Israeli officials have this week been voicing opposition to a ceasefire deal that would only involve the partial release of hostages.

On Wednesday, Hamas accused Netanyahu of disregarding the mediators’ ceasefire proposal and accused him of obstructing an agreement, according to a statement cited by Reuters.

Last Saturday, Netanyahu’s office put out a statement saying that Israel would only “agree to a deal on condition that all the hostages are released in one go”, and that the conditions for ending the war included the disarming of Hamas, the demilitarisation of Gaza, Israeli control of the Gaza perimeter, and the installation of non-Hamas and non-Palestinian Authority governance.

Israel believes that only 20 of the 50 hostages are still alive after 22 months of war.

Palestinians said there had been heavy bombardment in eastern areas of Gaza City on Thursday, a day after the military said it had taken the first steps in the offensive.

The IDF has warned medical officials and international organisations to prepare for the planned evacuation of Gaza City’s entire population of one million residents to shelters in the south before troops move in.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said it rejected “any step that would undermine what remains of the health system”. The UN and aid groups have vowed to stay to help those who cannot or choose not to move.

Netanyahu announced Israel’s intention to take control of the entire Gaza Strip after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal broke down last month.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 62,192 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry. The ministry’s figures are quoted by the UN and others as the most reliable source of statistics available on casualties.

Russia has launched 574 drones and 40 missiles on Ukraine in one of the heaviest bombardments in weeks, Ukrainian officials say.

One person was killed in a drone and missile strike on the western city of Lviv, while 15 others were reported wounded in an attack on the south-western Transcarpathia region.

The attacks came as US President Donald Trump spearheads diplomatic moves to halt the war. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the strikes highlighted why efforts to bring it to an end were “so critical”.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine was ready to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin “in neutral Europe” – mooting Switzerland or Austria – adding that he was not against Istanbul either.

Zelensky has stated his willingness to meet Putin in “any format”, although he has poured cold water on the idea of talks taking place in Budapest, which he said “is not easy today”.

The prospect of direct talks emerged after Trump met Putin in Alaska, and then hosted Zelensky and European leaders at the White House on Monday.

The US president initially suggested trilateral talks involving him, Putin and Zelensky, but has since suggested he might not take part: “Now I think it would be better if they met without me… If necessary, I’ll go.”

Ukraine’s air force counted 614 drones and other missiles fired by Russia overnight into Thursday and said it had stopped 577 of them. It is the biggest air attack since July.

While Russian strikes tend to focus on eastern regions close to the front lines, the latest attacks hit western areas as well.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its forces have occupied most of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, including Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russia currently controls around a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.

Sybiha said hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles were among the weapons used in the overnight barrage.

The Ukrainian air force said many of the attacks came from western Russia, as well as from the Black Sea, while one missile came from Russian-occupied Crimea.

In the western Lviv region, where one person was killed, three more were injured in attacks that damaged more than 20 civilian buildings including residential homes and a nursery.

Another 15 people were injured when cruise missiles hit a US electronics firm in the far south-western town of Mukachevo in Transcarpathia, not far from Ukraine’s borders with Hungary and Slovakia.

“One of the missiles struck a major American electronics manufacturer in our westernmost region, leading to serious damage and casualties,” Sybiha wrote on social media on Thursday. The plant produces coffee machines and other household goods, officials say.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Zelensky said there was still no sign from Moscow that they “truly intend to engage in substantive negotiations” to end the war.

He also made clear his lack of enthusiasm for Budapest as a host for potential talks on Thursday, citing Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s strong ties with Moscow: “I’m not saying that Orban’s policy was against Ukraine, but it was against supporting Ukraine.”

The idea of the Hungarian capital as a potential venue for peace talks has emerged in recent days. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Budapest was ready to provide “appropriately fair and safe conditions” for negotiations to take place.

The Ukrainian leader also said Russian forces were massing on the southern front line in the Zaporizhzhia region – one of four regions of Ukraine that Russia now claims as its own.

“We can see that they continue transferring part of their troops from the Kursk direction to Zaporizhzhia.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine said its armed forces had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region, which borders the Donbas.

Officials said they also hit a Russian drone depot in the occupied eastern city of Donetsk, as well as other military and infrastructure facilities.

While bloody fighting continues, the front lines in the war have remained largely stagnant in recent months, with small, territorial gains.

Amidst this stalemate on the ground, Russia has expanded its aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure – particularly as diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the war ramped up.

Ukraine suffered its largest-ever aerial attack in early July, when 728 drones and 13 missiles struck cities across the country in multiple waves.

In the wake of the latest attack, Sybiha reiterated Ukraine’s call for additional air defences from allies to fend off future attacks.

The US and EU have struck what is being billed as the largest trade deal in history, after talks in Scotland last month.

Some details of the deal have emerged after the countries initially released only the framework for the agreement.

The announcement by President Donald Trump and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen offers clues about which sectors and groups could be hit hardest or have the most to gain.

After promising new trade deals with dozens of countries, Trump has just secured the biggest of them all.

It looks to most commentators that the EU has given up more, with instant analysis by Capital Economics suggesting a 0.5% knock to GDP.

There will also be tens of billions of dollars pouring into US coffers in import taxes.

But headlines heralding the deal may not last long if critics point to recent inflation, jobs, growth and consumer confidence data as evidence that Trump’s radical reshaping of the US economy is backfiring.

• Why were US job numbers which riled Trump revised down by so much?

Ordinary Americans are already aggrieved at the increased cost of living and this deal could add to the burden by hiking prices on EU goods.

While not as steep as it could have been, the hurdle represented by a 15% tariff rate is still significant, and it is far more pronounced than the obstacles that existed before Trump returned to office.

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods bought from other countries. Typically, they are a percentage of a product’s value. So, a 15% tariff means that a $100 product imported to the US from the EU will have a $15 dollar tax added on top – taking the total cost to the importer to $115.

Companies who bring foreign goods into the US have to pay the tax to the government, and they often pass some or all of the extra cost on to customers.

Stock markets in Asia and Europe rose after news first emerged of the deal framework.

Under the deal, the US will levy a 15% tariff on goods imported from the EU. While this rate is significant, it is less than what it could have been and at least offers certainty for investors.

The agreement is “clearly market-friendly, and should put further upside potential into the euro”, Chris Weston at Pepperstone, an Australian broker, told AFP.

The deal will need to be signed off by all 27 members of the EU, each of which have differing interests and levels of reliance on the export of goods to the US.

While some members have given the agreement a cautious welcome, others have been critical – hinting at divisions within the bloc, which is also trying to respond to other crises such as the ongoing war in Ukraine.

• A big Trump win but not total defeat for Brussels

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou commented: “It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission.”

He was joined by at least two other French government ministers as well as Viktor Orban, the Hungarian leader, who said that Trump “ate von der Leyen for breakfast”.

The tariff faced by importers bringing EU cars to the US has been nearly halved, from the rate of 27.5% that was imposed by Trump in April to a new rate of 15%.

Cars are one of the EU’s top exports to the US. And as the largest manufacturer of cars in the EU – thanks to VW, Mercedes and BMW – Germany will have been watching closely.

Its leader, Friedrich Merz, has welcomed the new pact, while admitting that he would have welcomed a “further easing of transatlantic trade”.

That downbeat sentiment was echoed by the German carmaking trade body, the VDA, which warned that even a rate of 15% would “cost the German automotive industry billions annually”.

Trump is trying to boost US vehicle production. American carmakers received a boost when they learned that the EU was dropping its own tariff on US-made cars from 10% to 2.5%. Theoretically that could result in more American cars being bought in Europe.

That could be good for US sales overseas, but the pact is not all good news when it comes to domestic sales. That is down to the complex way that American cars are put together.

Many of them are actually assembled abroad – in Canada and Mexico – and Trump subjects them to a tariff of 25% when they are brought into the US. That compares with a lower tariff rate of 15% on EU vehicles. So US car makers may now fear being undercut by European manufacturers.

Trump had previously threatened a 250% tariff rate to be levied on European-made drugs being bought in the US. The EU wants drugs to be subject to the lowest rate possible, to benefit sales.

The US president had said that pharmaceuticals and semiconductors were not covered by the deal announced. But details released later show tariffs will be limited to 15% on the two sectors – in line with most other sectors in the trade deal.

European pharma had been hoping for a total tariffs exemption. The industry currently enjoys high exposure to the US marketplace thanks to products like Ozempic, a star type-2 diabetes drug made in Denmark.

This has been highlighted in Ireland, where opposition parties have pointed out the importance of the industry and criticised the damaging effect of uncertainty.

• Ireland ‘not celebrating’ Trump’s EU deal

Trump said the EU will purchase $750bn (£558bn, €638bn) in US energy, in addition to increasing overall investment in the US by $600bn.

“We will replace Russian gas and oil with significant purchases of US LNG [liquified natural gas], oil and nuclear fuels,” said Von der Leyen.

This will deepen links between European energy security and the US at a time when it has been pivoting away from importing Russian gas since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Von der Leyen said that some “strategic products” will not attract any tariffs, including aircraft and plane parts, certain chemicals and some agricultural products.

That means firms making components for aeroplanes will have friction-free trade between the huge trading blocs.

She added that the EU still hoped to get more “zero-for-zero” agreements, notably for wines and spirits, in the coming days.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

An inquest has found a 32-year-old woman, who died while skydiving the day after her relationship ended, took her own life.

Marketing manager Jade Damarell died after crashing on to farmland near Fleming Field in Shotton Colliery, County Durham on 27 April.

The inquest in Crook heard she was a “very experienced skydiver” but had made no attempt to deploy either her main or reserve parachutes.

Assistant coroner Dr Leslie Hamilton concluded that on the “balance of probabilities” she intended to take her own life and recorded a verdict of suicide.

Resuming the inquest, Dr Hamilton said the sport was one of Ms Damarell’s passions and she had completed more than 500 jumps.

The inquest heard weather conditions on the day of her death were good.

A helmet camera, which she had previously used while carrying out jumps, was not used on the day of her death and all her equipment was in working order.

Dr Hamilton summarised a statement from her former partner which said that they “had ended their relationship the night before”.

He said that they had met through a shared love of skydiving.

The day before she died, she had completed six jumps safely, the hearing heard.

Ms Damarell, who lived in Caerphilly, in Wales, died as a result of “blunt trauma”, a previous post-mortem examination at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Newcastle found.

Toxicological tests were negative for drink or drugs.

Her parents Liz and Andrew Samuel observed the hearing remotely.

After the inquest, her family said: “Our beloved daughter Jade was a brilliant, beautiful, brave and truly extraordinary person.

“A bright, adventurous, free spirit, she lived with immense energy, passion and love and touched countless lives with her warmth and kindness.”

German prosecutors say a Ukrainian man has been arrested in Italy on suspicion of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea, several months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The man, identified only as Serhii K, was arrested in the province of Rimini and was part of a group who planted explosives under the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines from Russia to Germany, federal prosecutors say.

The blasts severed a key source of natural gas for Europe when leaders were facing an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war.

No-one admitted carrying out the attack, and Ukraine has denied involvement.

The Ukrainian, who was detained by Italy’s carabinieri military police stationed in the northern coastal resort of Misano Adriatico, is suspected of being one of the masterminds of the operation.

Prosecutors said he was part of a team that had chartered a yacht and sailed from the German port of Rostock to an area of the Baltic near the Danish island of Bornholm.

Although Nord Stream 2 never went into operation, Nord Stream 1’s two pipelines had provided a steady supply 1,200km (745 miles) under the Baltic from the Russian coast to north-eastern Germany.

Shortly before Russia’s invasion, Germany had cancelled its process to approve Nord Stream 2, which was 100% owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom. Months later, Russia shut down Nord Stream 1.

Then, on 26 September 2022, several explosions were recorded that ruptured three of the four pipelines.

Mystery surrounded the identity of the saboteurs, with Russia coming under Western suspicion and Moscow blaming the US and UK.

Last year German reports suggested a team of Ukrainian divers had hired a yacht and sailed out into the Baltic to attack the pipelines.

German prosecutors issued a warrant for the arrest of a diver named Volodymyr Z last August.

They said on Thursday that the suspect held in Rimini would be brought before an investigating judge after he was extradited from Italy.

The prosecutors said the man was “strongly suspected of jointly causing an explosion and of sabotage undermining the constitution”.

There is no evidence so far linking Ukraine, Russia or any other state to the attacks.

US President Donald Trump has backed down from setting high tariffs on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors imported from the European Union.

Last month, Trump said pharmaceuticals and semiconductors were not covered by the US and EU’s handshake trade deal – meaning those sectors could have faced tariffs rates of 250% and 100% respectively.

But according to new details released about the US-EU agreement on Thursday, EU pharma and semiconductor tariffs will be limited to 15% in line with most other sectors in the trade deal.

However, the EU will first have to pass legislation reducing US export tariffs to zero in order to get the 27.5% tariffs on car exports reduced to 15%.

In a joint statement on the agreement, the US and EU said this was a “first step in a process” that could be expanded as the relationship develops.

The trade deal was first announced at a meeting between Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland last month.

They agreed to reduce tariffs on most EU exports to 15%, half the rate originally threatened by Trump but higher than the 10% tariff secured by the UK.

At the time, von der Leyen described it as a “framework” agreement with details to be worked out over the following weeks.

But later threats of higher tariffs on pharmaceutical and semiconductor exports to the US heightened fears that those products would be excluded from the deal.

In July, Trump had threatened to lift pharmaecutical tariffs to 200%, but speaking on CNBC on 5 August, Trump said they could eventually go as high as 250%.

“We want pharmaceuticals made in our country,” he told CNBC.

EU member state Ireland is a major pharmaceutical exporter to the US, as are other European nations: Ozempic manufacturer Novo Nordisk is also Europe-based, headquartered in Denmark.

On Thursday, Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Simon Harris welcomed the assurance that the 15% rate will include pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

“This provides an important shield to Irish exporters that could have been subject to much larger tariffs,” he said. “Our intention now is to see what other carve outs can be made in areas of interest for Irish exporters.”

According to the joint agreement, the US will apply the new 15% tariff rate on most European goods, including European semiconductor and lumber exports, from 1 September.

In return, the EU will reduce to zero tariffs on “all US industrial goods”, including agricultural products such as fresh fruit and vegetables, pork, bison meat, and tree nuts.

It is only once Europe removes tariffs on US exports – a move that requires legislation – that the White House will reduce the 27.5% tariff on European motor vehicle exports to 15%, the agreement said.

EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic told a news conference the deal sets out that the 15% tariff on cars would be retroactively applied from the first of the month in which the legislative process begins.

Sefcovic said it was the EU’s “firm intention” to get that process started this month, and he had received reassurance from the US that the lower tariff would then apply from 1 August.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the deal offered predictability for the bloc’s businesses and consumers, as well as “stability in the largest trading partnership in the world”.

“This EU-US trade deal delivers for our citizens & companies, and strengthens transatlantic relations,” she said on X on Thursday.

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the deal “creates historic access to the vast European markets” for American producers.

“The America First Trade Agenda has secured the most important trading partner creating a major win for American workers, US. industries, and our national security,” he wrote on X.

“Tariffs should be one of America’s favorite words.”

The deal comes after months of tariff threats and intense negotiations between the US and the EU, after Trump first announced in April that he would hit all European exports with a 30% tariff.

However, there was disappointment on both sides of the Atlantic that wine and spirits had not managed to be exempted from tariffs.

The French wine exporters federation, FEVS, said it would “create major difficulties for the wines and spirits sector”.

Mr Sefcovic said that with wine and spirits, “unfortunately, here we didn’t succeed”, although he added, “these doors are not closed forever.”

In the US, the Distilled Spirits Council also said it was disappointed by the agreement.

It said that without “a permanent return to zero-for-zero tariffs on spirits”, US distillers would not have the certainty to plan for future growth, while higher tariffs on EU spirits would “further compound the challenges facing restaurants and bars” in the US.

McDonald’s Japan has postponed a child’s menu toy promotion after complaints that a recent Pokémon giveaway led to piles of food being dumped, with the cards then being sold on for profit.

The fast-food giant said on Thursday that its collaboration with the popular pirate-themed manga title “One Piece” would now not run.

Earlier this month, the McDonald’s giveaway of limited-edition Pokémon cards with its “Happy Set” meals led to long queues and bulk-buying.

Pictures shared online showed bags of food dumped on the street and complaints that the cards were being sold online for profit. The giveaway was planned to last for three days, but many outlets ran out of cards on the first.

In a statement on its website, McDonald’s Japan said that it had “postponed” the One Piece promotion, which was due to start on 29 August, as part of a “review of Happy Set-related initiatives”.

Customers would now receive toys that accompanied previous Happy Set meals instead, the company said.

Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency has told McDonald’s it must improve its sales strategy and take steps to improve food wastage.

One Piece is a long-running series of comics and an animated programme, in which a pirate boy battles rivals while searching for treasure known as “One Piece”. The comics were launched in 1997, with the animated series coming two years later.

Several related games and toys are hugely popular in Japan.

McDonald’s has had similar problems with other campaigns in the past, including a collaboration with the “Chiikawa” manga series that was also targeted by online resales.

After the Pokémon debacle, McDonald’s Japan issued a public apology and pledged to take steps to prevent similar issues in the future.

Pokémon cards are extremely popular among children but also attract adult fans and collectors, with billions printed and some selling for tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One of the cards from the recent promotion, featuring the popular character Pikachu, is currently listed on one online auction site for over £25,000 ($33,000).

Last week, McDonald’s told local media it was reviewing its giveaways after the Pokémon campaign led to “large-scale purchases for the purpose of reselling, which resulted in store congestion or food being left behind and discarded”.

It said it was discontinuing the promotion and would be imposing a cap on the numbers of Happy Set meals that could be bought by customers.