The US and Denmark have announced a deal on Greenland's security, resolving a diplomatic dispute sparked by President Donald Trump's threats to seize the territory by force.

Trump said the agreement would grant the US "permanent control over security, and all other needs" in the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

The leaders of Denmark and Greenland welcomed the deal to "strengthen security" in the region, which they said was expected to be signed next week, but did not outline its contents.

The announcement comes after months of threats by Trump to "take" Greenland over national security concerns, citing its strategic location for defence purposes and its mineral wealth.

No text of the agreement has been released. Trump said the deal came with "no cost to the United States" and would grant the US the ability "to do what is necessary" to "secure and defend the security of Greenland", in a post on Truth Social.

He said it included a rule that no US adversary could maintain a military presence in Greenland or "make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval".

Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was "pleased that there is a prospect of a good agreement" for all three parties, which was expected to be signed at the UN General Assembly next week.

The deal "strengthens our common security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic area" while also recognising "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom and the right of the Greenlandic people to self-determination", she said in a joint statement with Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.

The agreement would still need to go through "the necessary parliamentary procedures to enter into force" once signed, the statement noted.

Nielsen said it was "gratifying that we are about to enter into an agreement that ensures and strengthens the security of Greenland, the Kingdom of Denmark, the United States and the Western alliance".

"The agreement recognises Greenland's interests and our place in international co-operation. It is for the benefit of us all," he said.

Trump had tried for months to purchase or annex the mineral-rich, semi-autonomous Danish territory, arguing that it was vulnerable to adversaries, including Russia and China. He even threatened military action in Greenland, prompting an outcry from Danes and other Nato countries.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it a "historic deal" and a "huge win for the United States and the American people".

"This deal permanently and completely addresses our national security concerns in Greenland," he said in a statement.

The text of the agreement has not been published. The BBC has contacted the Danish Embassy in the US and the White House.

However, an unnamed US State Department official outlined the deal without providing specifics.

Among the agreed provisions is one stating the deal would not expire even if Greenland became an independent country in the future.

The official added that under the deal, the US has unilateral power to build additional military structures with no approval needed from Greenland or Denmark. It includes "permanent access, basing and overflights rights," the official said.

It also bans non-Nato countries from building bases in Greenland, and "bans adversaries from making investments in Greenland that could threaten the United States".

The official added that under the current status quo, adversaries have been allowed to invest in Greenland's "sensitive sectors without investment screening".

The official specifically referenced Russia and China, saying it blocks them from deploying troops or making investments in "sensitive sectors".

Without the official text being released, it is unclear how exactly the deal differs from a 1951 agreement with Denmark, under which the US can send as many troops as it wants to Greenland.

The US already has more than 100 military personnel permanently stationed at its Pituffik base in the north-western tip of the territory.

Trump says Greenland is essential for his plan to build a Golden Dome defence system, designed to protect the US against missile attacks from Russia and China, and that European allies could co-operate in this endeavour.

The island has vast - and largely untapped - reserves of rare earth minerals, many of which are crucial for technologies including mobile phones and electric vehicles.

US President Donald Trump has announced that he is "immediately" banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, the latest twist in his fraught relationship with media outlets.

In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump said that the outlets "constantly write or report fiction or lies" about his administration, although he provided no examples.

Trump later called it a "very simple ban", but did not explain how it would work. It is unclear whether employees of those outlets would be prevented from entering the White House grounds.

CNN swiftly slammed the move as an "illegal assault" on American press freedoms. The move by Trump is likely to be met with legal challenges.

Reporters from both Politico and CNN were still on the White House grounds shortly after the announcement was made.

A crew from CNN was also travelling with Vice-President JD Vance to and from an event in Iowa.

In a statement, the network called a potential ban illegal and said it "stands fully behind our White House team and their fair and accurate reporting".

"We have a right under the US Constitution to do that reporting without hindrance or interference from the government," the CNN statement said. "Should the ban which President Trump threatened go ahead, it would be an illegal assault on that fundamental and constitutionally-protected right."

Politico also released a statement, saying it would "continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones.

"We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them."

MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, declined to comment.

Trump had said in his post: "Media outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report fiction and lies when they're covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration or the United States of America. Other news outlets to follow."

The post did not mention specific stories or reporting that prompted the move.

Asked by a reporter what he meant by others to come, Trump responded: "Others to come in terms of fake news? Well, you know, the New York Times is fake news, the Washington Post is fake news."

The White House Correspondents' Association President Jacqui Heinrich said it stood in "defence" of its colleagues who were "being singled out for doing their jobs".

"This is about more than the rights of journalists," Heinrich, who works for Fox News, also said. "It is about the right of the American people to receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies and decisions of whoever occupies the nation's highest office."

Asked about the ban later in the Oval Office, Trump said that there was "no reason" for the announcement being made on Friday afternoon.

"It's really just cumulative stories over the last few years," he said. "You get sick of it."

Trump added that there "may be others to join them", but did not name any specific news outlets.

He also acknowledged that legal challenges may follow his announcement, saying "I think it's good to point it out, whether it survives or doesn't".

Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump and administration officials have repeatedly clashed with members of the White House press corps. In his second term, Trump has also moved to bring conservative bloggers, influencers and other media into the press room, arguing it is necessary to provide diverse perspectives to the American public.

In February, the White House announced it was taking control of the press pool which has access to Trump and had for more than a century been managed by the White House Correspondents' Association.

The same month, the administration moved to bar Associated Press (AP) reporters and photographers from spaces where access is limited, such as the Oval Office or Air Force One, because of the outlet's usage of the term "Gulf of Mexico" instead of "Gulf of America".

AP swiftly filed a lawsuit and the case remains ongoing.

The president has frequently clashed with reporters in the Oval Office on Air Force One and during White House events, often referring to them as "fake news" and "rude".

In his first term, Trump also banned CNN correspondent Jim Acosta from the White House, although his credentials were restored after CNN sued.

CNN is one of only five US news outlets that film video for the pool. The pool refers to an outlet or reporter sharing material from a presidential event with other media outlets. The BBC contributes to the White House radio pool.

The announcement was immediately criticised by leading advocacy organisations for freedom of the press.

In a statement on Friday afternoon, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said that "with so many courts having ruled against him on exactly this point, you'd think President Trump would have learned this lesson by now".

"If President Trump means to expel these news organizations from the White House press pool, his action is doubly unconstitutional because the press pool is a 'public forum' under the First Amendment, which means the president can't exclude journalists from it on the basis of their viewpoints," said the institute's executive director, Jameel Jaffer.

A major group that provides legal services to the media - the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press - said it expected Trump's ban to be struck down quickly by the courts because it was "flatly unconstitutional".

"The First Amendment is clear that once the White House invites in some journalists, it can't ban others because it doesn't like their reporting," said the group's president Bruce Brown, calling the potential ban "textbook viewpoint discrimination".

The Freedom of the Press Foundation also said it was illegal, adding: "It's also hard to imagine a dumber move".

Trump "has been retaliating against the press for years, but it hasn't helped him," it said, saying "these outrageous attacks only demonstrate how scared he is of an informed public".

Trump has pursued legal action against a number of US and international news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the BBC.

Some of the lawsuits have resulted in media organisations agreeing to pay multimillion dollar settlements. Trump's lawsuit against the BBC is ongoing.

Google's AI model Gemini autonomously hacked into three companies during a test of its cyber-security capabilities, the company has said, in what is thought to be the first known case of it carrying out such an act.

Gemini found "public information online and guessed credentials to access websites it thought were part of the test", a Google official told the BBC, noting that in each instance "the model stopped".

The affected companies have been informed about the breach.

It comes after renewed public scrutiny over the pace of AI development, with some tech firms calling for a slowdown as they raise concerns over its potential threat to humanity - though not all companies agree.

The hacks first reported by the Wall Street Journal, occurred in May during a test conducted by an independent company that carries out cyber-security evaluations.

Heather Adkins, vice president of Security Engineering at Google, told the BBC in a statement: "We ensured the three entities were made aware, and we worked with our training partner on the changes they've now made to their testing processes."

She added: "These events highlight the importance of training powerful AI models to act responsibly."

Other AI systems have recently reported similar instances of breaches.

In July, Anthropic's Claude escaped its test environment to hack three organisations on its own just days after OpenAI said its models had carried out cyber-attacks against several "publicly available services".

As public debate continues to grow over the safety of developing the tech, so too does conversation around regulation.

Both Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman are expected to attend a White House state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping next Friday. Altman will then brief the UN Security Council next week.

On Friday, Huang told CBS News, the BBC's US partner, "we should go as fast as we can" with AI development.

US President Donald Trump has signed a sweeping sanctions bill, taking aim at Russia's economy by punishing major purchasers of its oil and gas.

The bill, passed by the US House of Representatives earlier this week, gives Trump broad powers to levy tariffs of up to 100% on the top five purchasers of Russian oil and gas – most significantly China and India.

At Trump's behest, the bill also extends to Iran's energy and weapons sectors.

The bill is named after the late Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Ukraine's staunchest defenders in Washington before his death on 11 July.

The 48-page bill, formally titled the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, includes exceptions for countries that import less than 15% of their natural gas from Russia and are working to lessen their dependency.

Additionally, the bill includes sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin, senior figures within the Russian government as well as banks and other financial institutions and Russia's "shadow fleet" of tankers used to circumvent existing sanctions.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a New York Democrat, previously described the legislation as "scorching sanctions" which would "throttle Putin's war machine".

Data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, or CREA, shows that China accounted for 50% of Russian crude exports between December 2022 and August 2026, followed by India at 37%.

Turkey and the European Union each accounted for 5% during the same time period, although Russian energy exports to the EU have been decreasing.

Senator Graham had long sought to push the Trump administration to do more to punish Russia for the war that followed its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The bill also received the support of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who thanked Trump for signing the "critically important legislation".

"The best way to honour Lindsey's memory will be to implement the provisions of this law fully and swiftly," he wrote on social media.

"Senator Graham never doubted for a second that America has enough strength to stand up to dictators and achieve results if it acts the right way."

Graham, 71, died on 11 July of an "aortic dissection" caused by cardiovascular disease shortly after returning from a trip to Kyiv.

"He died doing the work he was born to do," Trump said at the time.

Prior to his death, he was widely considered one of Ukraine's fiercest allies on Capitol Hill, at a time when Republicans were bitterly divided over the extent of US involvement abroad and the amount of aid being given to Ukraine.

"What we are going to do, I have no idea," sobs Nokwanda Matshikiza, reflecting on the murder of her niece Dineo Motapane. "But something must give."

"For us, for all the other women. How many other bodies will be found before something happens?"

Nokwanda is speaking to the BBC from the family home near South Africa's main city, Johannesburg, just two days after relatives identified Dineo's body.

The 38-year-old mother-of-two was last seen alive on Sunday. Her battered and partly burned body was later found in the residential region of Ekurhuleni.

Nokwanda weeps as she describes how the family will have to face, at some point, the grim task of telling Dineo's daughter of her death.

"How do you explain that your parent was brutally murdered, dumped in a field, and just left there, discarded like a piece of rubbish.

"There's no coming to peace with it," she adds. "It's something that you can never reconcile yourself with, that you can never get over."

Dineo's death this week has come amid a series of comparable incidents in Ekurhuleni – her body one of three discovered there this week. In total, nine bodies of murdered women have been found in similar circumstances in the region since July.

The problem has always been there but this spate of grim discoveries has once again sparked a national outcry about the scale of violence against women in the country – which has one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world.

Themba Kekana is also living in shock at the death of a loved one.

His sister, Itumeleng, was one of the first to disappear in Ekurhuleni.

The 32-year-old shopkeeper's body was found in July, 17 days after she was last seen alive. Her body was badly bruised, partially clothed and dumped on a bridge.

"We are devastated with grief," says Themba, wet eyes shining.

"I look at my sister's young daughter and my eyes fill with tears, I know there is no way that I can ever take this pain away from her.

"No family should have to deal with what we are faced with."

Only one arrest has been made in connection with the murders – and that was two days after the first body was discovered on 15 July.

Nobody has been detained following the murders of Itumeleng or Dineo or the other six Ekurhuleni women.

Most of the victims were young, in their 20s or 30s, and almost all had suffered extreme violence before their deaths.

Police have said they are not sure if they are hunting a serial killer. It is possible the cases are not linked.

Either way, what has happened in this residential district east of South Africa's biggest city has traumatised the nation, shining a spotlight on a situation that many believe is a crisis.

South Africa's police issue detailed crime statistics every quarter, which show that between April and June this year - 5,427 people were murdered.

The official data does not distinguish between the genders of the victims, but this week the country's Human Rights Commission released figures showing that 569 women had been killed in that period (six a day on average), with another 1,052 who faced attempted murder.

Many women - already feeling unsafe - have been left reeling by recent events.

And it has put pressure on the government, less than a year after ministers acknowledged the scale of the issue and declared gender-based violence a national disaster.

Announcing the move last November, Minister of Social Development Nokuzola Sisisi Tolashe said that treating the issue as a national disaster would help the government tackle the crisis.

It followed weeks of protests, culminating in a "Women's Shut Down" march as South Africa hosted the G20 summit.

This week has seen a chorus of calls for things to go further.

Rights group Amnesty International said an important first step towards protecting South Africa's women was to recognise femicide as a separate crime.

"Every day that femicide remains unrecognised as a crime is a failure to confront the targeted killing of women," said Amnesty's country director Shenilla Mohamed in a statement. "It is time to call it what it is: Femicide.

"Femicide is a gender-motivated crime. It is the killing of a woman because she is a woman."

Amnesty says femicide is criminalised as a specific crime in 33 countries, including Gabon and Morocco in Africa.

It argues that making that change in South Africa could help focus on the scale of the issue.

"It would compel the state to confront their failure to protect women and girls from violence," says Mohamed. "You cannot fix what you are not tracking."

Almost everyone in South Africa agrees more needs to be done.

President Cyril Ramaphosa this week pledged to leave "no stone unturned" in investigating the crimes in Ekurhuleni, adding: "As a nation, we must stand up for the rights, safety and dignity of women and girls."

Lebogang Ramofoko, an advocate for gender and social justice, said the levels of violence against women in the country were symptomatic of a much bigger problem – a lack of regard for humanity.

"The bodies of black women have been treated as disposable in this country for time in memorial, passed down from colonisation through to apartheid," she tells the BBC, referring to the legalised system of racism that was in place until 1994.

"What we see happening to women is testimony to legacies of violence from those systems whose traumas were never addressed.

"This is not to say black men are inherently violent, but in systems where violence was meted out against them for decades, historically black women were the people that that violence would be taken out on - that cycle has not been broken."

In Kempton Park, a district of Ekurhuleni where five of the nine recent bodies were found, Lumka Maqhubela is part of the Girl2Woman Foundation group which has held protests to raise awareness of the crimes.

"We are grieved, we are scared," she says. "If the police cannot protect us any more the government should step in and do something.

"It's clear that we are not safe, we cannot be told by the police to be more vigilant. They should be doing more to make our communities safe – what else are we expected to do? We are not safe anywhere, not in our homes, not in the streets, it needs to stop."

"I feel uncomfortable," says Thulisile Sibande, 32. "When I go to a shop, I have to look around. I'm shocked and scared. So scared, it's a trauma."

Thembi Mabena, 60, tells the BBC she lived in the same neighbourhood as Dineo Motapane.

"She was laughing every day, with everybody," she remembers. "Now I'm worried.

"I know many children, girls, who tell me they are afraid to go to the shop alone. There is no safety, even for me too. I am old, but there is no safety."

"In South Africa," says Lerato Mzizi, 20, simply, "women are not safe any more."

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

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Residents in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh have been given the all-clear after air raid alerts were issued and explosions were reported in the capital.

It was the first time alerts have been issued in Riyadh since the Houthis increased their attacks and declared a "maritime embargo" on the Saudis in July.

The Saudi Civil Defence sent alerts for the capital and several other regions late on Friday night and Saturday morning (local time) as the Kingdom's conflict with the Iran-backed Houthis continued to escalate.

Journalists from Reuters and AFP reported hearing explosions in the capital, but authorities have since said the danger has passed. Residents were urged to avoid gathering in crowds.

The Houthis recently seized control of the strategic port city of Mokha and Perim Island, a gateway to a key shipping route used by the Gulf state to export to Asia and Europe.

The Iran-backed group's military spokesman said the naval blockade was in retaliation for a Saudi blockade of ports and airports in Houthi-controlled north-western Yemen.

Saudi vessels have relied on that stretch of the Red Sea for oil exports since the US and Israel's war with Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Last week, the Houthis attacked several Saudi oil facilities with drones and missiles, causing fires which led to operations being temporarily halted.

The attacks on Saudi oil assets have directly impacted global energy markets and the price of petrol and diesel in many countries has sharply risen in recent weeks, compounding already elevated costs caused by the blockades of the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler, has personally asked US President Donald Trump to take military action against the Houthis, two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News, the BBC's US media partner.

Trump has so far declined to involve the US military directly, offering instead to assist with intelligence and targeting support, the sources said.

A senior Trump administration official told the BBC: "We are in continuous dialogue with Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Yemen government regarding regional stability."

Earlier this week, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said the Houthis had launched drones and missiles at Saudi Arabia in retaliation for more than 450 Saudi air strikes on their territory over the past week.

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on Tuesday, during which both Yemen's government and Saudi Arabia called for more decisive action against the Houthis, who they accused of choking the Bab al-Mandab Strait as a way of applying economic pressure.

Council members agreed that freedom of navigation in the Red Sea must be maintained to prevent disruption to global supply chains.

Yemen has been devastated by a civil war that began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government from the capital, Sanaa. The conflict escalated in 2015, after the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened in an attempt to restore the government's rule.

The fighting has reportedly left more than 150,000 people dead and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with more than 22 million people in need of some form of aid, according to the UN.

Additional reporting by Tabby Wilson.

A car-bomb attack on a mosque at a police compound in north-western Pakistan has killed at least 21 people and injured more than 100, officials say.

Fifteen police officers and a four-year-old child are among those killed in the suicide attack, which also involved gunmen firing on the police facility in the city of Kohat in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan's APP news agency reported.

Video found by BBC Verify shows the site covered in rubble and people tending to casualties.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police suggested a faction of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, carried out the attack.

A car loaded with explosives rammed into the entrance of the mosque at about 13:15 local time (08:15 GMT), police say. Friday prayers were taking place at the time.

At least six of the attackers were killed in the explosion and the gun battle that followed, according to a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police spokesperson.

In a post on X, the force said it was "determined to foil the nefarious designs of Fitna-al-Khawarij" - the designation used by officials to refer to the Pakistani Taliban.

The group was set up in 2007 with the aim of enforcing its strict version of Islamic law and is allied with al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari expressed "his best wishes for the swift recovery of those injured in the explosion" in a statement, and called for the "complete elimination" of foreign-backed terrorists.

A UN spokesman said Secretary-General António Guterres "strongly condemns" the bombing and that "attacks targeting civilians and places of worship are unacceptable".

In February, officials accused the Pakistani Taliban of being behind a series of attacks in the country, including the suicide bombing of a Shia mosque in Islamabad in which more than 30 people were killed.

Faisal Karim Kundi, governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said on Friday the province had endured "immense sacrifices in the fight against terrorism".

Militancy in Pakistan's border areas has risen sharply in recent months, with armed groups targeting the military and police.

Islamabad says militants use Afghanistan as a safe haven to train and plan attacks in Pakistan.

Afghanistan's Taliban government denies the accusation and says militant groups are a domestic problem for Pakistan.

French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the threat of hybrid attacks by Russia against Europe and France has intensified.

In a news conference at the Elysee Palace, Macron said he had ordered a plan to protect critical infrastructure and defence industry sites in the face of this threat.

He said France had been targeted by Russian hybrid attacks in the past few weeks which would not be left "without a response".

A growing number of European leaders have warned that Russia may be preparing attacks to test their commitment to supporting Ukraine.

Hybrid warfare or hybrid attacks are loose terms which tend to describe non-military methods, for example cyberattacks, sabotage or misinformation, designed to exert pressure and destabilise an adversary.

These are quite often employed using proxies, but Russia always denies involvement in such attacks despite growing evidence to the contrary.

The French president was speaking to journalists after meeting party leaders to discuss the security impact of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Macron mentioned last month's drone attack on Leipzig airport in Germany, blamed on Russia, and remarks by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk suggesting Russia was planning drone and missile strikes against Poland and other countries on Nato's eastern flank.

"In recent weeks, the Russian hybrid threat against Europeans and against France has intensified," he said.

"The intent is to intimidate us and break our effort to support Ukraine. The result will be the exact opposite. We are not intimidated because we know that our security today and tomorrow is at stake in Ukraine."

On Thursday Tusk told Polish MPs that Russian plans included strikes by drones and missiles on countries supporting Ukraine. He said there was a "real risk" of such strikes on the territory of Nato countries, with Moscow then claiming that they were "accidental", in an attempt to split the alliance.

Last Sunday, a Russian drone hit a passenger train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and top European security officials had passed through along the same line.

Ukraine said all the passengers had been evacuated just minutes before the strike at Yahodyn, which hit the train's engine.

There have also been a number of suspicious fires at defence facilities from Italy to Estonia, with some of the affected countries blaming Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said Russia does not plan to attack Europe, but Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned European nations against sending troops to Ukraine, which would be seen by Russia as a declaration of war.

"If Europe attacks Russia, it will be a completely different war, and it will be very short," he said.

Meanwhile on Friday, Russia reiterated its warning to the UK that any British military facilities in Ukraine used to strike Russian territory were "legitimate targets".

It reserved the right to take "necessary counter-measures" in response to the UK's "fiercely confrontational stance regarding Ukraine", referring to its supply of drones and other weapon systems to Kyiv.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Macron also addressed the energy situation, saying that the government had been tasked with protecting critical infrastructure and the "most sensitive" defence industry and technology sites against drone and cyberattacks.

He announced that France would call a meeting of the G7 to discuss energy and raise the question of gas stocks with the European Commission.

"In the coming weeks, we will have a G7 meeting devoted to these energy issues, both to strengthen cooperation and to avoid unnecessary tensions between the G7 countries and our main partners," Macron said.

"It will also be an opportunity to consider options for a possible release or unlocking of strategic reserves."

In a domestic context, he called on candidates in next year's elections not to exploit public unease by blaming the government, but to acknowledge that fuel price inflation was the result of uncontrollable international circumstances.

The hard-right opposition National Rally candidate Marine le Pen is currently leading the polls for the April-May vote to replace Macron.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has said he is "truly sorry" for describing rival airlines as "high-fare rapists".

He had previously refused to apologise to a rape crisis centre which criticised him for the comments.

O'Leary had made the remark earlier this month while talking to journalists ahead of Ryanair's yearly meeting with shareholders.

Following the comments, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) wrote to him asking for an apology, in a letter seen by the BBC.

O'Leary had originally said that some people were "desperate to get to Ryanair's low fares because they can't afford to fly with the high-fare rapists around Europe".

He subsequently defended his choice of words when asked by a reporter from the Press Association whether the language was appropriate.

"British Airways, Lufthansa, and everybody else's high fares, I'll happily offend them on a regular basis," he had added.

Asked whether it would offend sexual assault victims, he said rape was "a terrible crime".

In a video posted on Friday, O'Leary said that, over the last ten days, he had had "conversations with family and friends, both inside and outside Ryanair".

"I have come to realise however that the word that I used so carelessly has caused considerable upset and offence to a wide number of people, especially to victims and survivors.

"I want to apologise, sincerely and unreservedly, to those people, especially to the survivors."

O'Leary described his choice of language as "careless", and said "it won't happen again".

"I will try to learn from this mistake, and do better in future."

Following O'Leary's first comments, the DRCC's chief executive Rachel Morrogh had written to O'Leary accusing him of trying to get a headline with his comments.

She said the DRCC had received calls from rape victims who were "upset and distressed because of what you said".

She offered O'Leary training on the impact of sexual violence and urged him to apologise.

"I can't imagine you would ever use the term so flippantly again if you truly understood [what] it was like to survive rape," she wrote.

In response, O'Leary had said: "I am quite clear that no remarks of mine could possibly trivialise the heinous crime of rape."

He added that as he had not "trivialised the heinous crime of rape" he would "not be issuing any apology or accepting your offer of training".

It was not the first time O'Leary had offended people while talking about his business.

In 2004, he reportedly called the owners of Stansted Airport "a bunch of overcharging rapists" in a row over airport charges.

He has also previously called some of his own staff "lazy bastards" and once said to passengers looking for a refund "we don't want to hear your sob stories".

In June, he said the airline would "reluctantly" stop charging parents to sit next to children after a watchdog investigation was opened, but insisted its previous policy complied with laws.

The lone holdout juror in the trial of Lindsay Clancy has said he "didn't have any doubts" that she was criminally responsible for killing her three children.

"Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she knew exactly what she was doing and planned it," Michael Desronvil said in a statement to CBS News, the BBC's US partner.

The judge declared a mistrial on 4 September after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict following nearly 40 hours of deliberating.

Clancy admitted to the killings but her lawyers argued she had been suffering from postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors said the killings were calculated.

Warning: This article contains distressing details

The 36-year-old was charged with three counts of first-degree murder after strangling Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months, at the family's Massachusetts home before jumping out of the second-floor window.

To find Clancy guilty, jurors had to be unanimously convinced beyond reasonable doubt that she intentionally killed her children and that she did not do so as a result of postpartum psychosis, a rare and serious condition.

The jury - nine women and three men - considered a range of options including not guilty by reason of insanity, manslaughter and first-degree murder.

Several jurors have said following the mistrial being declared that the panel was ultimately divided 11-1 in favour of finding Clancy not criminally responsible.

Desronvil said he believed the evidence presented in court showed she had planned the killings.

"I didn't have any doubts," he said in a statement to CBS on Thursday.

"As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented."

Paula Devlin, one of the other jurors, told CBS Mornings that the panel had spent several days trying to convince Desronvil to change his mind.

"We all worked together to convince ourselves once we got to that point where it was 10 to 2," she said.

The jury foreperson, a retired fifth-grade teacher, described not being able to reach a verdict as "awful" and an "emotional rollercoaster".

She told NBC that Desronvil had "admitted he had reasonable doubt", but as she started filling out the verdict sheets, he apparently said: "But I'm still not going to say that she's not guilty by reason of insanity."

Another juror told local CBS station WBZ-TV that most of the jurors had been "very firm in their stance" from the start and "the stand-alone juror was not the only one that was unwilling to see things from the other side".

But they added that because Desronvil would not "follow" his reasonable doubt nor offer logical reasoning for his position, they felt Clancy had not received a fair trial.

The identities of all 11 jurors have not been officially disclosed but in the US, once a case is over, any juror can choose to speak publicly about a case and their deliberations.

Patrick Clancy, the children's father and Lindsay Clancy's ex-husband, is due to speak publicly about the case in an interview with the CBS programme 60 Minutes on Sunday.

In it, he is expected to discuss his grief, his memories of his children and the conspiracy theories that have flooded social media since the trial began.

He said he still speaks to his children "all the time", describing it as "a way I stay connected to them".

During the trial, Clancy's defence team had attempted to use her being put on more than a dozen medications in the lead-up to the killings, as well as seeking help from a suicide hotline and an emergency room, as evidence of her psychosis.

Postpartum psychosis can involve hallucinations and delusions, and her lawyers argued that she was unable to understand the nature of her actions or distinguish right from wrong.

A forensic psychiatrist who testified for the defence said Clancy experienced a "command hallucination" and a "delusion of influence" when she killed her children.

However, her psychiatrist testified for the prosecution that Clancy did not show signs of psychosis during their sessions, while another psychiatrist noted that the condition was not currently recognised by the American Psychiatric Association.

Under Massachusetts law, prosecutors had to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Clancy was criminally responsible for the jury to find her guilty. The defence did not have to prove her mental illness or lack of criminal responsibility.

The mistrial leaves the case unresolved. Prosecutors have not said whether they will seek a retrial.

Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has said he hopes to reach an agreement with prosecutors to avoid a second trial.

He told ABC's Good Morning America that he was upset that the lone juror would not acquit Clancy.

He said the holdout "would not apply the law of reasonable doubt" as instructed by the judge, adding: "That's not right. And that's why I was upset."

The next court hearing is scheduled for 29 September at Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts.

Police have begun moving hundreds of migrants in Ceuta to a new tented site in the port area of the Spanish territory in north Africa.

Officers struggled to contain crowds of people jostling to secure a place at the site after weeks of living on the beaches. Shots could be heard, with reports that police fired into the air.

Several hundred migrants have now reached the camp, which has a capacity for 1,700 people.

Most of the 72,000 migrants who breached the border from Morocco in July have returned. Ceuta's authorities have estimated that 13,000 remain in the enclave, but the Spanish central government has said it is lower.

The operation began at about 07:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on Friday, with more than 3,000 migrants being transferred, according to the Spanish government-owned news agency Efe.

During the process, some migrants broke through the cordon along the designated 2km (1.2 mile) route to the port. Video shows young men running in the darkness as police tried to maintain control.

More than 170 police officers have been deployed, including drone technicians, Efe reported. It added that the situation was later "brought under control quickly", and the operation was able to continue.

The operation is part of the government's attempt to concentrate the migrants in facilities where they can be identified and cared for while their administrative status is individually determined.

The chaotic scenes will do little to dampen opposition criticism in Spain of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has faced strong criticism over his handling of the crisis.

Since the migrant influx, residents of the 18.5 sq km (7.2 sq miles) territory have expressed safety concerns. Some have destroyed shelters and blocked aid being supplied to the migrants.

Ceuta's Mayor Juan Jesus Vivas told lawmakers in the European Parliament earlier this month that the migrants had turned Ceuta into a "pressure cooker".

"The city is completely different than it was before this event, Ceutans have lost their joy and their lifestyles have been completely shaken up," the conservative mayor said.

The opposition also accused Sánchez of knowing about the influx of migrants in advance. Sánchez has insisted that it was impossible to predict, but according to government documents, its intelligence services had warned of social media calls for a mass migrant crossing into Ceuta the day before the events happened.

Ester Muñoz of the conservative People's Party said the government was "directly responsible for the invasion of Ceuta and for those who died".

Sanchez has blamed trafficking gangs and has also said the crisis was sparked by hoaxes and rumours spread by social media.

Ceuta was "a humanitarian crisis and also an administrative challenge within the city itself", the prime minister said.

The incident has also created diplomatic headaches for Sánchez.

The prime minister is at odds with Italy, with the two countries earlier this week extending temporary border controls imposed on each other. He is also trying to maintain his bilateral relationship with Morocco.

The influx of migrants in late July came after Spain's Supreme Court ruled that migrants stopped at sea while trying to reach Ceuta cannot be summarily returned to Morocco.

After the ruling, some social media accounts spread misinformation and offered to help migrants cross the Spanish border for hundreds of pounds.

Thousands of people then flooded across the border fence and swam around the ocean barriers. At least 100 people died during the crossing, according to local authorities.

For much of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Daria was not afraid of the shelling.

Even on nights of heavy bombardment, the 27-year-old could sleep through the explosions in her apartment in Kyiv. Like many Ukrainians, she relied on the "two-wall rule": staying safe by keeping two walls between herself and the outside world.

But this year that has changed.

In recent months, Russia has scaled up the intensity and frequency of its attacks against the Ukrainian capital.

In the first 10 days of July alone, the Russians launched dozens of ballistic missiles in three major attacks, killing nearly 60 civilians, according to official figures. Similar large scale attacks took place in August and September.

A BBC Verify analysis of government figures found Kyiv is now suffering more daily air raid alerts than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.

It was during an attack one night in May that Daria realised she no longer felt safe in her home.

She and her boyfriend were in the corridor of their ninth-floor apartment, watching a boxing match, as explosions went off around them, the blast waves causing the windows to repeatedly slam open and shut.

When the fight ended, "there was no longer anything to distract me," Daria says. "That's when I realised I was really scared."

At first, she thought she would start using a nearby bomb shelter during attacks.

But in June, when a young mother was killed running to a shelter in Kyiv, Daria decided she needed to leave the city altogether.

She returned to her family's country house, 30km (18.6 miles) away in Romankiv, and now spends a total of four hours a day commuting to and from Kyiv, where she works in the defence sector.

Daria's experience is far from unique.

Residents in Kyiv who say they had got used to Russia's missile and drone strikes have told the BBC World Service the renewed intensity of the attacks is making them rethink how they live their lives.

Previously, Ukraine's air-defence network and military intelligence gave residents a degree of predictability. Large-scale attacks could often be detected in advance, allowing people to spend the night in shelters, leave the city or take other precautions. But since the summer, Russia has changed its tactics.

It has relied less on aircraft, whose movements can be spotted ahead of time, and more on ballistic missiles that travel at tremendous speed and provide little warning. Air-raid alerts sometimes begin only moments before impact, or even simultaneously with the first explosions.

Daria can see her nearest shelter from the window of her apartment, which she still rents. Even so, it takes around 10 minutes to reach it. During a ballistic attack, she might have just four minutes' warning or less, she says.

She decided to leave Kyiv in June after holidaying abroad this summer and seeing people living "normal" lives. Since then, she has only spent one night in Kyiv.

Yet, for many, leaving is not an option.

Sixty-two-year-old Olha Vlasova lives on the seventh floor of a high-rise apartment block with her 98-year-old mother, Nadia Tsybina.

Despite her age, Nadia remains intensely engaged with the world.

From her bed she follows events in Ukraine and abroad, discussing everything from US President Donald Trump's policies, to anti-corruption protests in Kyiv, and the Epstein files.

She's also learned that she can often tell, simply by listening, whether a Russian missile or drone has been intercepted or has reached its target.

This summer, she says she has heard fewer interceptions.

"It's upsetting when there's nothing to shoot them down with," Nadia says. "I can hear them firing with whatever they've got, rifles, machine guns."

With Nadia confined to her bed, she and Olha cannot go to a shelter, however serious an attack is. Instead, as soon as an air-raid siren sounds, Olha covers her mother with a blanket, pushes a mattress into their window frame, and then hides in a wardrobe which puts two walls between her and outside.

Nadia places a pillow over her head to protect her face from flying glass.

Once in her wardrobe, Olha will often stay awake watching the news all night.

"They come in, they bomb us," Nadia says. "You haven't even had time to fall asleep, and there's another alert. They come again, they shoot them down again. And it goes on all night.

"People don't sleep, and then they walk around like zombies."

An increase in daytime attacks means life in Kyiv is now interrupted by air raid sirens day and night.

At the beginning of September, when children returned to school after the summer break, there were dozens of air raid alerts, followed by explosions and fires.

According to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, two children were injured in attacks on 31 August.

As a result, many children stayed at home, while others spent hours in the basements of schools and kindergartens.

When the sirens sound, it also affects businesses and transport. Shopping centres close and above-ground metro stations suspend operations, often severing public transport links between Kyiv's Left and Right Banks, on either side of the Dnieper River, for hours at a time.

New metro operating rules during air raid alerts are being introduced in an attempt to improve the situation.

For Olha, it has meant seeing less of her eight-year-old granddaughter, who lives on the other side of the city.

She knows if her granddaughter comes to visit, she risks struggling to return home. When metro services stop running, expensive cab journeys are Olha's only option. Crossing the river can cost as much as 1,000 hryvnias ($22, £16.6), she says, just under one-eighth of Ukraine's monthly minimum wage.

The experience has left her frustrated with what she sees as hesitation by some of Ukraine's foreign partners to provide additional air-defence missiles.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly appealed to allies for additional air-defence systems and interceptor missiles.

"They [Ukraine's allies] wait, thinking: 'What if we get attacked?'" Olha says. "It's like refusing to give medicine to a cancer patient because you're saying, 'What if I get sick one day?' Well, maybe you won't. Give it away before it expires."

In another part of the city, mother-of-two Natalia Bushkovska each night rehearses three different plans.

Plan A is to spread bedding in the hallway behind two interior walls; Plan B is to move the family into the building's shared corridor; and Plan C is to head for the basement.

Even there, she admits, she does not feel entirely safe.

"I keep a backpack with essential items," says Natalia, 37. "There's a tourniquet for severe bleeding. I also keep a whistle, just in case.

"If the worst happens, rescuers will be able to find us under the rubble."

Her nine-year-old daughter has her own emergency bag containing toys, lip balm and a tourniquet. Like her 12-year-old brother, she learned how to use a tourniquet through first-aid training.

Natalia says the constant attacks are exhausting.

While her son often sleeps through them, she and her daughter wake up almost every time.

"Because of the attacks, I don't get enough sleep," she says. "Now, in the fifth year of the war, I find it increasingly difficult to bounce back after nights like these."

The growing intensity of the strikes, she says, is taking a psychological toll across the city.

"People are exhausted. They don't have enough time to recover."

On Thursday 17 September, Russia launched a ballistic missile attack on Kyiv. According to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, 20 people were injured in the attack. Among the wounded were two children, aged 10 and 12.

Additional reporting by Janet Ball

Mary Timby was fed up with dating apps when she booked a trip to Ireland on a whim last summer - from the comfort of her Colorado couch.

The spur-of-the-moment trip was unlike her: Timby, 39, is a self-described "total planner".

But she'd always wanted to visit Ireland, and she found herself exhausted by the local dating scene while navigating a career transition. And then she remembered a few throwaway lines from a comedy series about a matchmaking festival in Ireland.

So she looked it up - and not only was the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival real, it was also taking place during the entire month of September, when she was scheduled to visit.

Now, a little more than a year later, Timby is reaping the benefits of that uncharacteristic last-minute decision: She's become a viral star. She's found love with an Irishman she met at a pub called The Matchmaker. And she's even started a new business venture - bringing others to Lisdoonvarna who hope to follow in her footsteps.

"It's really about enjoying County Clare, enjoying the festival, and, if you meet someone, you do - and that's what happened with us," says Timby, smiling at her partner, Jason Mangan, sitting beside her.

They're speaking from the windswept coastal cottage they rented together for the summer in his native County Clare - about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Lisdoonvarna, the site of their first fortuitous meeting.

From the outset, Timby's inaugural Ireland trip seemed to take on a life of its own.

She filmed a short video on the plane before her flight took off, telling her approximately 300 TikTok followers that she was heading on an off-the-cuff trip to an Irish matchmaking festival - and didn't "know what's going to happen".

Timby then "turned my phone on airplane mode, then spent about eight hours on the flight (and) woke up at Shannon Airport," she says.

When she turned on her phone, "it was blowing up".

A group of friends had texted her. "They said, 'Mary, your video is going viral,'" she says. "I didn't even have notifications on for social media."

She rented a manual transmission car - horrified to find the gear stick on the left side of the driver's seat - and set off through County Clare to her accommodation at an Irish family's home.

Then she headed to Lisdoonvarna, where she saw firsthand that the festival is a whole-town, month-long celebration of conversation and dancing, rather than a line of singles waiting to be set up by a sage local matchmaker.

That's changed since the festival's origins 170 years ago, when bachelor farmers and moneyed visitors would flock to the spa town of Lisdoonvarna to bathe in its mineral-rich waters and socialise. Generations of matchmakers would ply their trade to set up successful marriages, and word spread. Now, while the town's year-round residents number fewer than 1,000, that number swells up to 80,000 each September as revellers descend upon Lisdoonvarna from around the world.

Third-generation matchmaker Willie Daly still holds court at his nearby home and at festival events, and Timby even visited him during her trip - when he put her on the phone to random men whose accents she struggled to understand.

But the real magic of contemporary Lisdoonvarna lies in the town's overflowing streets and pubs - as Timby soon found out.

Her first night in town was "a little slow," she admits - and Timby was tired and jet-lagged. She retired to her room and spent the next day sightseeing, but the Irish woman running her accommodation convinced her to try Lisdoonvarna again that night.

"My AirBnB host said, 'You should go back tonight, because I heard that the younger folks come out at night,'" laughs Timby.

So she did - and found herself dancing and drinking pints at The Matchmaker Bar in the centre of town. That's when a "handsome Irishman" approached her.

"I went over and introduced myself, and... conversation just flowed," says Mangan, 38, from Ennis, County Clare, about 22 miles southeast of Lisdoonvarna. He'd been to the festival before and was well-acquainted with its cultural significance, remembering his grandparents making the journey decades earlier for the dancing.

"Unfortunately, I didn't have much time on my hands, because I was turning back to Ennis," says Mangan, designated driver that night for a group of friends. "So I got her name, and I said, 'Oh, sure, I might see you around.'

"It was a very short interaction, to be honest with you."

He didn't leave it at that, though; Mangan found Timby on Instagram and followed up with a message inviting her out.

"It was short and sweet, and it was really genuine, too," says Timby - and she took him up on the offer.

What followed was a series of whirlwind dates - lunches, dinners, sightseeing and shopping trips. Timby extended her time in Ireland and documented much of it for her newfound following - but she didn't reveal anything about her new beau. They wanted to save the burgeoning romance for themselves.

When Timby eventually had to fly home, there were "tears at the airport" - but they decided to keep the relationship going.

"It was very tough to say goodbye," Timby says. "It was very tough to start a long-distance relationship, but it ended up being a really good opportunity for us to sort of slow things down a bit."

They kept talking daily, Mangan impatiently waiting for Timby to wake up seven hours behind him in Colorado. She flew back to Ireland again, then he made his first trip to America for Thanksgiving 2025. Timby returned to Ireland at Christmas and met his family, and after that, they decided to make her boyfriend's big social media reveal.

"We thought, this is something we already know we want to invest in... we were ready to share," Timby says. "So New Year's Eve, we shared a photo of him, and people were just over-the-moon excited."

The pair watched their following grow, drawing interest from Irish cafes and tourist destinations to the local Gaelic sports club in Colorado. Their story also caught the attention of Lisdoonvarna locals, who approached Timby - a communications consultant - about being an ambassador for the festival.

"So I said: Sign me up," Timby laughs. "I love the festival. It brought me Jay."

Timby's been inundated with messages from lovelorn followers hoping to replicate her matchmaking success.

"I heard from many of my followers... groups of people wanting to go to the festival but not having anyone to go with" or "not knowing what to do," Timby says. "I really listened to that, and I also wanted to be mindful of the fact that I love Ireland.

"I'm so excited to showcase County Clare and all the amazing things that the west coast of Ireland has, but I'm also not a tour operator."

So she partnered with a company called Met Through Friends, which organises and encourages real-life meetups for people looking for love. They released an interest form for a trip, expecting "80 to 100 responses." They received 560.

The first group of eight will make the trip later this month, with Timby's Irish boyfriend consulting on the itinerary.

"You can go on all these apps, swipe left, swipe right, but it's not actually going out and making a connection with someone and experiencing a small little town in Ireland, experiencing the culture," says Mangan.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience... you never know."

Timby, smiling at her boyfriend of one year, agrees.

"I echo everything Jay just said," she says. "Put your phone down and put yourselves out there, and good things will come."

This week, the board of Tata Sons - one of India's oldest conglomerates and owner of iconic British brands such as Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Tea - defied its largest shareholder, Tata Trusts, by reappointing N Chandrasekaran as chairman and backing a public listing of the holding company.

Tata Trusts, which owns 66% of Tata Sons called the decision "illegal" under its articles of association and also opposed the listing, setting the stage for a period of prolonged upheaval and possibly a protracted legal drama at Bombay House, the headquarters of the 158-year-old company.

For the Tatas, who are no strangers to boardroom battles, a cloud of uncertainty now prevails at multiple levels.

The resolution to reappoint Chandrasekharan, while approved by the board, could be defeated at the company's Annual General Meeting as Tata Trusts is likely to vote against it, putting a question mark over his future.

The meeting has to take place before 31 December as per reports, after the previous one was adjourned for lack of quorum, but no new date has yet been announced.

"The Nomination and Remuneration Committee (NRC) of the Board of Tata Sons which reappointed him has no power to take this decision. They can only make a recommendation. Also, their decision flies against the governance code of the company that requires executives to step down from active roles at 65. These are serious lapses," Nitin Potdar, a prominent Mumbai-based corporate lawyer told the BBC.

Chandrasekharan, who got a five-year extension, will turn 65 in 2028.

Tata Group stocks first soared and then crashed as the tensions mounted, reflecting hope and uncertainty about leadership and business continuity amid several high-stakes but loss-making bets by Chandrasekharan in sectors like semiconductors and airlines.

But beyond the leadership tussle, the bigger question to contend with is the group's public listing, "which now looks increasingly inevitable", Nirmalya Kumar, who previously headed strategy at Tata Sons, told the BBC.

In 2022, India's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), classified Tata Sons as an "upper layer non-banking financial company" because of its systemic importance and investment activities. This created a listing obligation on the group.

Tata Sons sought to get out of this classification by repaying their debt and arguing that they do not borrow directly from the public markets.

But after sitting on its application for over two years, the RBI rejected the company's bid to get out of the framework earlier this month, pushing the group closer to a stock market debut.

In a statement, Tata Trusts reiterated its long-held opposition to going public and said "all available options and not a listing alone" are being explored even though its trustees are no longer unanimous in their position on the matter.

Potdar says the regulator has no power to force any company to go public and the issue will almost certainly be legally challenged by Tata Trusts.

The RBI meanwhile has pre-emptively approached the courts seeking to be heard first in any matter related to the ‌listing.

The issue has sharply divided opinion among corporate pundits.

Many in the group, including the late Ratan Tata and veteran director NA Soonawala, have long argued strongly for keeping the group private.

A publicly held Tata Sons could significantly reduce the control and special rights the Tata Trusts wield over the group.

They say the Tatas have a unique operating structure where the majority shareholder is a charity which uses dividends received from commercial arms to fund hospitals, universities and research.

A listing, they say, will destroy its character by making it accountable to outside shareholders whose focus would be financial returns.

"A new group of shareholders might say, 'Don't declare dividends; we need to reinvest this money in the companies.' What happens then? The first casualty will be the hospitals they run," said Potdar.

Opponents of the initial public offering (IPO) also worry that bringing in public investors will weaken the group's internal support function to rescue distressed businesses and expose the company to quarterly performance pressures.

Moreover the timing is another crucial factor.

"The group currently faces large financial commitments from recently formed subsidiary companies, including Air India, investments in long gestation projects, and losses in newer ventures," Soonawala wrote in a piece for Times of India.

"The current situation in the case of Air India would be an acid test. All these would need to be disclosed fully in an IPO prospectus. Consolidated financial statements – reflecting subsidiary losses and borrowings – may not present an especially attractive picture to sophisticated investors, pointing to wrong timing for an IPO at the present time."

Many, including Potdar, also argue that globally, industrial foundations are being protected as sources of patient capital - money that can be committed for years to fund long-gestation projects and social goals. By forcing the Tatas to list, India is going the other way.

But supporters of a listing say it would bring much-needed transparency and accountability to a group that is systemically important to India.

"There should be tougher scrutiny of their capital-allocation decisions being so central to the Indian business ecosystem. Everybody wants complete control over their empire and the freedom to take capricious decisions, but that is not a good thing for the organisation," said Kumar.

Collectively, listed Tata companies including Tata Motors and TCS have a market capitalisation of more than $260bn and influence over 17.7 million retail shareholders, pension funds, insurers and mutual funds, investment advisory firm InGovern said.

"[It] cannot reasonably remain outside the governance and transparency expectations increasingly associated with systemically important financial and industrial conglomerates," the report added.

It also argued that shareholders of listed Tata companies are indirectly affected by Tata Sons' decisions, even though they have no direct voting rights in the holding company.

Moreover, given that the Tatas have recently made several high stakes global bets, making iPhones for Apple, partnering with Nvidia on artificial intelligence and Boeing, Airbus and Singapore Airlines on aerospace and aviation, InGovern says, a "flexible and transparent capital structure increasingly important".

Some experts say a listing may now be the only way to ease increasingly fractious relations between the board and shareholders - tensions that are hurting not just the group, but India more broadly.

Tata Trusts hold controlling economic interest and veto rights over Tata Sons board appointments and capital allocation decisions above a certain threshold.

It's hard to imagine the latter can function effectively on crucial issues of national interest - such as turning around Air India or raising funds to pay off a large minority shareholder like the SP Group which is in urgent need of cash to avert a potentially ruinous default - if it can no longer see eye to eye with its biggest shareholder.

Whatever happens on the listing front, experts say India's biggest trophy asset is entering totally uncharted territory. As Kumar suspects, "a new twist" can be expected every week.

Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook.

President Donald Trump's administration says it has approved the sale of nearly 50 F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia in a policy shift for the US that has raised concerns from some members of Congress.

Saudi Arabia has sought for years to buy the world's most advanced warplane, equipped with stealth technology that allows it to evade enemy detection.

Washington had resisted, partly because it supplies F-35s to its ally Israel, which is guaranteed under US law to receive top-of-the-range American weapons compared with those its regional neighbours can access.

Congress has 30 days to scrutinise or attempt to block the $24bn (£17.8bn) sale to Riyadh, which is the largest customer for US weapons.

Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, a Democrat, opposed the sale on Thursday.

He warned "it could put the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party".

Other Democratic lawmakers and some American defence officials have raised similar concerns about giving F-35s to Saudi Arabia.

They said Riyadh might share the sensitive technology with China under a security partnership between the two countries.

The state department said in announcing the deal on Thursday that it would support US "foreign policy and national security objectives".

It said the deal would improve "the security of a major non-Nato ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region".

"The proposed ⁠sale of this equipment and support will not alter the military ⁠balance in the region," the state department added.

Trump has a close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who visited the White House last November.

The two also met in May last year in Riyadh, where a $142bn arms sale was sealed – described by the White House as the "largest defence sales agreement in history".

The latest proposed sale announced to Saudi Arabia would include 48 F-35s, which are built by the arms company Lockheed Martin.

This would place the country on a level with Israel, which currently has a fleet of 50 jets.

However, Israel's ministry of foreign affairs announced in May that it would procure another F-35 squadron.

This deal would double the size of Israel's F-35 fleet to 100, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Just one of Lockheed Martin's F-35A jets costs about $82.5m.

Congress has previously questioned arms deals with Riyadh after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

Former US President Joe Biden's administration considered supplying F-35s to Saudi Arabia if Riyadh would normalise its ⁠relations with Israel, but that diplomatic effort faltered.

The proposed sale comes as the Saudis are engaged in fighting with the Houthis, an Iran-backed armed group that controls much of western Yemen.

The Houthis have recently seized control of swathes of Yemen's Red Sea coast from Saudi-backed pro-government forces.

The Saudi crown prince has personally pressed Trump to take military action against the Houthis, two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News, the BBC's US media partner.

But Trump has so far declined to involve the US military directly, the sources said.

Additional reporting by Sareen Habeshian

Miriam Levin-Gold likes Prime Minister Mark Carney's idea of Canadians being able to live and work in the European Union under proposed closer ties with the trade bloc.

"I think that's great for young people to explore different parts of the world and work in different places and have different experiences," the commuter told the BBC in Toronto.

Canadians woke up to news of Carney's speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday morning, welcoming the EU's ambition for Canada to become its first "associate member" as he urged closer co-operation on defence and energy.

"We should deepen our people-to-people ties, allowing our youth to live, work and study where they want on either side of the Atlantic," the PM said.

He also suggested Canada could join Erasmus+, the EU's multi-billion scholarship programme.

Carney told MEPs that Canada and Europe were "stronger together" in the face of "geopolitical rupture".

But before Canadians start packing their bags - "associate member" status does not currently exist within the EU and could take years to implement, given that all 27 EU member states would have to approve such an arrangement.

Nevertheless, people the BBC spoke to were excited about the potential prospect of working and studying in the EU as news of Carney's speech spread.

Alex Nash, from Montreal, said closer ties would clear away the obstacles of work visas and permits.

"It would certainly be really nice for that to be easier, more convenient and to be able to visit more easily," she said.

Canadian social media has lit up with the topic.

One person on a Facebook group, A Canadian Outlook, said they would love the opportunity for their grandchildren to study at European universities for better rates. Another woman said it would make it much easier for the home she already owns in France.

"Snow birds are going to love it," another person said, referring to Canadians who head to warmer locations for winter.

The sentiments hint at dissatisfaction in Canada over bilateral tensions with the US.

Growing up in Canada, David Jardine thought of the US as not just a neighbour, but an epicentre of culture and cool.

"I remember wanting to go and visit New York all the time," he told the BBC after finishing his overnight shift, not far from one of Toronto's most iconic buildings, the CN tower.

But he's become a lot more sceptical in the light of US President Donald Trump's trade war with Canada and rhetoric about annexation.

"I would say I think not only does it make more sense to associate closely with Europe, it's a place that I would rather be associating with given the way things are these days," he said.

Maggie Stainton, who manages local pub C'est What in Toronto's St Lawrence Market district, became emotional when she spoke about Canada's frayed ties with the US.

"It's too volatile with the United States," she said. "I feel that there's some stability in Europe."

For decades, America has been a cultural centre of gravity that is difficult to avoid, with many Canadian actors working in Hollywood and Canadian radio stations playing US music.

"I think we're forced to feel more American simply by the influences that we have," Stainton added.

"However, I think deep down, I definitely I lean towards feeling more European in my ideas and ideals."

These views were echoed by many other people the BBC spoke to in the centre of Canada's biggest city.

Carney, who used to lead Canada and Britain's central banks, was elected on a promise that he would not only take a tough stance against Trump, but broaden Canada's economic horizons.

Up to 72% of Canadian exports are to the US, and the ongoing trade tensions have spurred Ottawa to seek closer ties with other nations.

The EU, in many ways, would seem a natural fit. Over half of Canada's population reported having European origins, according to the last census, which was taken in 2021.

A recent Abacus Data survey conducted before Carney's speech found that 80% of Canadians say the country should deepen strategic cooperation with the EU, and over half feel closer to Europe than America.

However, details of Carney's proposed plans for greater ties with the EU are scarce.

A pair of opposition Conservative MPs have called on him to elaborate on what he and the bloc plan to work towards.

"It could be a concrete, meaningful proposal. Or it could be just words and vibes," said Adam Chambers, MP for Simcoe North in Ontario, during an interview with the BBC on the eve of Carney's speech on Thursday.

Chambers alluded to the existing Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) between the EU and Canada, highlighting that it still awaits ratification by multiple EU nations.

And while deepening ties with Europe would be welcomed by many Canadians, there is still a sense that the country's relationship with the US - however strained - must not crumble.

"I grew up here. I've been here 40 years in Canada, in Ontario, and America's always been the neighbour," says Ahmed Khalil.

Building bridges with Europe makes sense, he said: "I think it brings in more money for Canada and more culture, brings Europeans over, probably solves a lot of problems."

But Canada shouldn't forget its southern neighbour, added Khalil.

"I think both are equally valuable to us," he said. "Both are equally valid."

With additional reporting by Madeline Halpert and James FitzGerald

US President Donald Trump has announced that he is "immediately" banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, the latest twist in his fraught relationship with media outlets.

In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump said that the outlets "constantly write or report fiction or lies" about his administration, although he provided no examples.

Trump later called it a "very simple ban", but did not explain how it would work. It is unclear whether employees of those outlets would be prevented from entering the White House grounds.

CNN swiftly slammed the move as an "illegal assault" on American press freedoms. The move by Trump is likely to be met with legal challenges.

Reporters from both Politico and CNN were still on the White House grounds shortly after the announcement was made.

A crew from CNN was also travelling with Vice-President JD Vance to and from an event in Iowa.

In a statement, the network called a potential ban illegal and said it "stands fully behind our White House team and their fair and accurate reporting".

"We have a right under the US Constitution to do that reporting without hindrance or interference from the government," the CNN statement said. "Should the ban which President Trump threatened go ahead, it would be an illegal assault on that fundamental and constitutionally-protected right."

Politico also released a statement, saying it would "continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones.

"We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them."

MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, declined to comment.

Trump had said in his post: "Media outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report fiction and lies when they're covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration or the United States of America. Other news outlets to follow."

The post did not mention specific stories or reporting that prompted the move.

Asked by a reporter what he meant by others to come, Trump responded: "Others to come in terms of fake news? Well, you know, the New York Times is fake news, the Washington Post is fake news."

The White House Correspondents' Association President Jacqui Heinrich said it stood in "defence" of its colleagues who were "being singled out for doing their jobs".

"This is about more than the rights of journalists," Heinrich, who works for Fox News, also said. "It is about the right of the American people to receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies and decisions of whoever occupies the nation's highest office."

Asked about the ban later in the Oval Office, Trump said that there was "no reason" for the announcement being made on Friday afternoon.

"It's really just cumulative stories over the last few years," he said. "You get sick of it."

Trump added that there "may be others to join them", but did not name any specific news outlets.

He also acknowledged that legal challenges may follow his announcement, saying "I think it's good to point it out, whether it survives or doesn't".

Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump and administration officials have repeatedly clashed with members of the White House press corps. In his second term, Trump has also moved to bring conservative bloggers, influencers and other media into the press room, arguing it is necessary to provide diverse perspectives to the American public.

In February, the White House announced it was taking control of the press pool which has access to Trump and had for more than a century been managed by the White House Correspondents' Association.

The same month, the administration moved to bar Associated Press (AP) reporters and photographers from spaces where access is limited, such as the Oval Office or Air Force One, because of the outlet's usage of the term "Gulf of Mexico" instead of "Gulf of America".

AP swiftly filed a lawsuit and the case remains ongoing.

The president has frequently clashed with reporters in the Oval Office on Air Force One and during White House events, often referring to them as "fake news" and "rude".

In his first term, Trump also banned CNN correspondent Jim Acosta from the White House, although his credentials were restored after CNN sued.

CNN is one of only five US news outlets that film video for the pool. The pool refers to an outlet or reporter sharing material from a presidential event with other media outlets. The BBC contributes to the White House radio pool.

The announcement was immediately criticised by leading advocacy organisations for freedom of the press.

In a statement on Friday afternoon, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said that "with so many courts having ruled against him on exactly this point, you'd think President Trump would have learned this lesson by now".

"If President Trump means to expel these news organizations from the White House press pool, his action is doubly unconstitutional because the press pool is a 'public forum' under the First Amendment, which means the president can't exclude journalists from it on the basis of their viewpoints," said the institute's executive director, Jameel Jaffer.

A major group that provides legal services to the media - the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press - said it expected Trump's ban to be struck down quickly by the courts because it was "flatly unconstitutional".

"The First Amendment is clear that once the White House invites in some journalists, it can't ban others because it doesn't like their reporting," said the group's president Bruce Brown, calling the potential ban "textbook viewpoint discrimination".

The Freedom of the Press Foundation also said it was illegal, adding: "It's also hard to imagine a dumber move".

Trump "has been retaliating against the press for years, but it hasn't helped him," it said, saying "these outrageous attacks only demonstrate how scared he is of an informed public".

Trump has pursued legal action against a number of US and international news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the BBC.

Some of the lawsuits have resulted in media organisations agreeing to pay multimillion dollar settlements. Trump's lawsuit against the BBC is ongoing.

Residents in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh have been given the all-clear after air raid alerts were issued and explosions were reported in the capital.

It was the first time alerts have been issued in Riyadh since the Houthis increased their attacks and declared a "maritime embargo" on the Saudis in July.

The Saudi Civil Defence sent alerts for the capital and several other regions late on Friday night and Saturday morning (local time) as the Kingdom's conflict with the Iran-backed Houthis continued to escalate.

Journalists from Reuters and AFP reported hearing explosions in the capital, but authorities have since said the danger has passed. Residents were urged to avoid gathering in crowds.

The Houthis recently seized control of the strategic port city of Mokha and Perim Island, a gateway to a key shipping route used by the Gulf state to export to Asia and Europe.

The Iran-backed group's military spokesman said the naval blockade was in retaliation for a Saudi blockade of ports and airports in Houthi-controlled north-western Yemen.

Saudi vessels have relied on that stretch of the Red Sea for oil exports since the US and Israel's war with Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Last week, the Houthis attacked several Saudi oil facilities with drones and missiles, causing fires which led to operations being temporarily halted.

The attacks on Saudi oil assets have directly impacted global energy markets and the price of petrol and diesel in many countries has sharply risen in recent weeks, compounding already elevated costs caused by the blockades of the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler, has personally asked US President Donald Trump to take military action against the Houthis, two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News, the BBC's US media partner.

Trump has so far declined to involve the US military directly, offering instead to assist with intelligence and targeting support, the sources said.

A senior Trump administration official told the BBC: "We are in continuous dialogue with Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Yemen government regarding regional stability."

Earlier this week, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said the Houthis had launched drones and missiles at Saudi Arabia in retaliation for more than 450 Saudi air strikes on their territory over the past week.

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on Tuesday, during which both Yemen's government and Saudi Arabia called for more decisive action against the Houthis, who they accused of choking the Bab al-Mandab Strait as a way of applying economic pressure.

Council members agreed that freedom of navigation in the Red Sea must be maintained to prevent disruption to global supply chains.

Yemen has been devastated by a civil war that began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government from the capital, Sanaa. The conflict escalated in 2015, after the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened in an attempt to restore the government's rule.

The fighting has reportedly left more than 150,000 people dead and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with more than 22 million people in need of some form of aid, according to the UN.

Additional reporting by Tabby Wilson.

This week, the board of Tata Sons - one of India's oldest conglomerates and owner of iconic British brands such as Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Tea - defied its largest shareholder, Tata Trusts, by reappointing N Chandrasekaran as chairman and backing a public listing of the holding company.

Tata Trusts, which owns 66% of Tata Sons called the decision "illegal" under its articles of association and also opposed the listing, setting the stage for a period of prolonged upheaval and possibly a protracted legal drama at Bombay House, the headquarters of the 158-year-old company.

For the Tatas, who are no strangers to boardroom battles, a cloud of uncertainty now prevails at multiple levels.

The resolution to reappoint Chandrasekharan, while approved by the board, could be defeated at the company's Annual General Meeting as Tata Trusts is likely to vote against it, putting a question mark over his future.

The meeting has to take place before 31 December as per reports, after the previous one was adjourned for lack of quorum, but no new date has yet been announced.

"The Nomination and Remuneration Committee (NRC) of the Board of Tata Sons which reappointed him has no power to take this decision. They can only make a recommendation. Also, their decision flies against the governance code of the company that requires executives to step down from active roles at 65. These are serious lapses," Nitin Potdar, a prominent Mumbai-based corporate lawyer told the BBC.

Chandrasekharan, who got a five-year extension, will turn 65 in 2028.

Tata Group stocks first soared and then crashed as the tensions mounted, reflecting hope and uncertainty about leadership and business continuity amid several high-stakes but loss-making bets by Chandrasekharan in sectors like semiconductors and airlines.

But beyond the leadership tussle, the bigger question to contend with is the group's public listing, "which now looks increasingly inevitable", Nirmalya Kumar, who previously headed strategy at Tata Sons, told the BBC.

In 2022, India's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), classified Tata Sons as an "upper layer non-banking financial company" because of its systemic importance and investment activities. This created a listing obligation on the group.

Tata Sons sought to get out of this classification by repaying their debt and arguing that they do not borrow directly from the public markets.

But after sitting on its application for over two years, the RBI rejected the company's bid to get out of the framework earlier this month, pushing the group closer to a stock market debut.

In a statement, Tata Trusts reiterated its long-held opposition to going public and said "all available options and not a listing alone" are being explored even though its trustees are no longer unanimous in their position on the matter.

Potdar says the regulator has no power to force any company to go public and the issue will almost certainly be legally challenged by Tata Trusts.

The RBI meanwhile has pre-emptively approached the courts seeking to be heard first in any matter related to the ‌listing.

The issue has sharply divided opinion among corporate pundits.

Many in the group, including the late Ratan Tata and veteran director NA Soonawala, have long argued strongly for keeping the group private.

A publicly held Tata Sons could significantly reduce the control and special rights the Tata Trusts wield over the group.

They say the Tatas have a unique operating structure where the majority shareholder is a charity which uses dividends received from commercial arms to fund hospitals, universities and research.

A listing, they say, will destroy its character by making it accountable to outside shareholders whose focus would be financial returns.

"A new group of shareholders might say, 'Don't declare dividends; we need to reinvest this money in the companies.' What happens then? The first casualty will be the hospitals they run," said Potdar.

Opponents of the initial public offering (IPO) also worry that bringing in public investors will weaken the group's internal support function to rescue distressed businesses and expose the company to quarterly performance pressures.

Moreover the timing is another crucial factor.

"The group currently faces large financial commitments from recently formed subsidiary companies, including Air India, investments in long gestation projects, and losses in newer ventures," Soonawala wrote in a piece for Times of India.

"The current situation in the case of Air India would be an acid test. All these would need to be disclosed fully in an IPO prospectus. Consolidated financial statements – reflecting subsidiary losses and borrowings – may not present an especially attractive picture to sophisticated investors, pointing to wrong timing for an IPO at the present time."

Many, including Potdar, also argue that globally, industrial foundations are being protected as sources of patient capital - money that can be committed for years to fund long-gestation projects and social goals. By forcing the Tatas to list, India is going the other way.

But supporters of a listing say it would bring much-needed transparency and accountability to a group that is systemically important to India.

"There should be tougher scrutiny of their capital-allocation decisions being so central to the Indian business ecosystem. Everybody wants complete control over their empire and the freedom to take capricious decisions, but that is not a good thing for the organisation," said Kumar.

Collectively, listed Tata companies including Tata Motors and TCS have a market capitalisation of more than $260bn and influence over 17.7 million retail shareholders, pension funds, insurers and mutual funds, investment advisory firm InGovern said.

"[It] cannot reasonably remain outside the governance and transparency expectations increasingly associated with systemically important financial and industrial conglomerates," the report added.

It also argued that shareholders of listed Tata companies are indirectly affected by Tata Sons' decisions, even though they have no direct voting rights in the holding company.

Moreover, given that the Tatas have recently made several high stakes global bets, making iPhones for Apple, partnering with Nvidia on artificial intelligence and Boeing, Airbus and Singapore Airlines on aerospace and aviation, InGovern says, a "flexible and transparent capital structure increasingly important".

Some experts say a listing may now be the only way to ease increasingly fractious relations between the board and shareholders - tensions that are hurting not just the group, but India more broadly.

Tata Trusts hold controlling economic interest and veto rights over Tata Sons board appointments and capital allocation decisions above a certain threshold.

It's hard to imagine the latter can function effectively on crucial issues of national interest - such as turning around Air India or raising funds to pay off a large minority shareholder like the SP Group which is in urgent need of cash to avert a potentially ruinous default - if it can no longer see eye to eye with its biggest shareholder.

Whatever happens on the listing front, experts say India's biggest trophy asset is entering totally uncharted territory. As Kumar suspects, "a new twist" can be expected every week.

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"What we are going to do, I have no idea," sobs Nokwanda Matshikiza, reflecting on the murder of her niece Dineo Motapane. "But something must give."

"For us, for all the other women. How many other bodies will be found before something happens?"

Nokwanda is speaking to the BBC from the family home near South Africa's main city, Johannesburg, just two days after relatives identified Dineo's body.

The 38-year-old mother-of-two was last seen alive on Sunday. Her battered and partly burned body was later found in the residential region of Ekurhuleni.

Nokwanda weeps as she describes how the family will have to face, at some point, the grim task of telling Dineo's daughter of her death.

"How do you explain that your parent was brutally murdered, dumped in a field, and just left there, discarded like a piece of rubbish.

"There's no coming to peace with it," she adds. "It's something that you can never reconcile yourself with, that you can never get over."

Dineo's death this week has come amid a series of comparable incidents in Ekurhuleni – her body one of three discovered there this week. In total, nine bodies of murdered women have been found in similar circumstances in the region since July.

The problem has always been there but this spate of grim discoveries has once again sparked a national outcry about the scale of violence against women in the country – which has one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world.

Themba Kekana is also living in shock at the death of a loved one.

His sister, Itumeleng, was one of the first to disappear in Ekurhuleni.

The 32-year-old shopkeeper's body was found in July, 17 days after she was last seen alive. Her body was badly bruised, partially clothed and dumped on a bridge.

"We are devastated with grief," says Themba, wet eyes shining.

"I look at my sister's young daughter and my eyes fill with tears, I know there is no way that I can ever take this pain away from her.

"No family should have to deal with what we are faced with."

Only one arrest has been made in connection with the murders – and that was two days after the first body was discovered on 15 July.

Nobody has been detained following the murders of Itumeleng or Dineo or the other six Ekurhuleni women.

Most of the victims were young, in their 20s or 30s, and almost all had suffered extreme violence before their deaths.

Police have said they are not sure if they are hunting a serial killer. It is possible the cases are not linked.

Either way, what has happened in this residential district east of South Africa's biggest city has traumatised the nation, shining a spotlight on a situation that many believe is a crisis.

South Africa's police issue detailed crime statistics every quarter, which show that between April and June this year - 5,427 people were murdered.

The official data does not distinguish between the genders of the victims, but this week the country's Human Rights Commission released figures showing that 569 women had been killed in that period (six a day on average), with another 1,052 who faced attempted murder.

Many women - already feeling unsafe - have been left reeling by recent events.

And it has put pressure on the government, less than a year after ministers acknowledged the scale of the issue and declared gender-based violence a national disaster.

Announcing the move last November, Minister of Social Development Nokuzola Sisisi Tolashe said that treating the issue as a national disaster would help the government tackle the crisis.

It followed weeks of protests, culminating in a "Women's Shut Down" march as South Africa hosted the G20 summit.

This week has seen a chorus of calls for things to go further.

Rights group Amnesty International said an important first step towards protecting South Africa's women was to recognise femicide as a separate crime.

"Every day that femicide remains unrecognised as a crime is a failure to confront the targeted killing of women," said Amnesty's country director Shenilla Mohamed in a statement. "It is time to call it what it is: Femicide.

"Femicide is a gender-motivated crime. It is the killing of a woman because she is a woman."

Amnesty says femicide is criminalised as a specific crime in 33 countries, including Gabon and Morocco in Africa.

It argues that making that change in South Africa could help focus on the scale of the issue.

"It would compel the state to confront their failure to protect women and girls from violence," says Mohamed. "You cannot fix what you are not tracking."

Almost everyone in South Africa agrees more needs to be done.

President Cyril Ramaphosa this week pledged to leave "no stone unturned" in investigating the crimes in Ekurhuleni, adding: "As a nation, we must stand up for the rights, safety and dignity of women and girls."

Lebogang Ramofoko, an advocate for gender and social justice, said the levels of violence against women in the country were symptomatic of a much bigger problem – a lack of regard for humanity.

"The bodies of black women have been treated as disposable in this country for time in memorial, passed down from colonisation through to apartheid," she tells the BBC, referring to the legalised system of racism that was in place until 1994.

"What we see happening to women is testimony to legacies of violence from those systems whose traumas were never addressed.

"This is not to say black men are inherently violent, but in systems where violence was meted out against them for decades, historically black women were the people that that violence would be taken out on - that cycle has not been broken."

In Kempton Park, a district of Ekurhuleni where five of the nine recent bodies were found, Lumka Maqhubela is part of the Girl2Woman Foundation group which has held protests to raise awareness of the crimes.

"We are grieved, we are scared," she says. "If the police cannot protect us any more the government should step in and do something.

"It's clear that we are not safe, we cannot be told by the police to be more vigilant. They should be doing more to make our communities safe – what else are we expected to do? We are not safe anywhere, not in our homes, not in the streets, it needs to stop."

"I feel uncomfortable," says Thulisile Sibande, 32. "When I go to a shop, I have to look around. I'm shocked and scared. So scared, it's a trauma."

Thembi Mabena, 60, tells the BBC she lived in the same neighbourhood as Dineo Motapane.

"She was laughing every day, with everybody," she remembers. "Now I'm worried.

"I know many children, girls, who tell me they are afraid to go to the shop alone. There is no safety, even for me too. I am old, but there is no safety."

"In South Africa," says Lerato Mzizi, 20, simply, "women are not safe any more."

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

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For much of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Daria was not afraid of the shelling.

Even on nights of heavy bombardment, the 27-year-old could sleep through the explosions in her apartment in Kyiv. Like many Ukrainians, she relied on the "two-wall rule": staying safe by keeping two walls between herself and the outside world.

But this year that has changed.

In recent months, Russia has scaled up the intensity and frequency of its attacks against the Ukrainian capital.

In the first 10 days of July alone, the Russians launched dozens of ballistic missiles in three major attacks, killing nearly 60 civilians, according to official figures. Similar large scale attacks took place in August and September.

A BBC Verify analysis of government figures found Kyiv is now suffering more daily air raid alerts than at any time since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.

It was during an attack one night in May that Daria realised she no longer felt safe in her home.

She and her boyfriend were in the corridor of their ninth-floor apartment, watching a boxing match, as explosions went off around them, the blast waves causing the windows to repeatedly slam open and shut.

When the fight ended, "there was no longer anything to distract me," Daria says. "That's when I realised I was really scared."

At first, she thought she would start using a nearby bomb shelter during attacks.

But in June, when a young mother was killed running to a shelter in Kyiv, Daria decided she needed to leave the city altogether.

She returned to her family's country house, 30km (18.6 miles) away in Romankiv, and now spends a total of four hours a day commuting to and from Kyiv, where she works in the defence sector.

Daria's experience is far from unique.

Residents in Kyiv who say they had got used to Russia's missile and drone strikes have told the BBC World Service the renewed intensity of the attacks is making them rethink how they live their lives.

Previously, Ukraine's air-defence network and military intelligence gave residents a degree of predictability. Large-scale attacks could often be detected in advance, allowing people to spend the night in shelters, leave the city or take other precautions. But since the summer, Russia has changed its tactics.

It has relied less on aircraft, whose movements can be spotted ahead of time, and more on ballistic missiles that travel at tremendous speed and provide little warning. Air-raid alerts sometimes begin only moments before impact, or even simultaneously with the first explosions.

Daria can see her nearest shelter from the window of her apartment, which she still rents. Even so, it takes around 10 minutes to reach it. During a ballistic attack, she might have just four minutes' warning or less, she says.

She decided to leave Kyiv in June after holidaying abroad this summer and seeing people living "normal" lives. Since then, she has only spent one night in Kyiv.

Yet, for many, leaving is not an option.

Sixty-two-year-old Olha Vlasova lives on the seventh floor of a high-rise apartment block with her 98-year-old mother, Nadia Tsybina.

Despite her age, Nadia remains intensely engaged with the world.

From her bed she follows events in Ukraine and abroad, discussing everything from US President Donald Trump's policies, to anti-corruption protests in Kyiv, and the Epstein files.

She's also learned that she can often tell, simply by listening, whether a Russian missile or drone has been intercepted or has reached its target.

This summer, she says she has heard fewer interceptions.

"It's upsetting when there's nothing to shoot them down with," Nadia says. "I can hear them firing with whatever they've got, rifles, machine guns."

With Nadia confined to her bed, she and Olha cannot go to a shelter, however serious an attack is. Instead, as soon as an air-raid siren sounds, Olha covers her mother with a blanket, pushes a mattress into their window frame, and then hides in a wardrobe which puts two walls between her and outside.

Nadia places a pillow over her head to protect her face from flying glass.

Once in her wardrobe, Olha will often stay awake watching the news all night.

"They come in, they bomb us," Nadia says. "You haven't even had time to fall asleep, and there's another alert. They come again, they shoot them down again. And it goes on all night.

"People don't sleep, and then they walk around like zombies."

An increase in daytime attacks means life in Kyiv is now interrupted by air raid sirens day and night.

At the beginning of September, when children returned to school after the summer break, there were dozens of air raid alerts, followed by explosions and fires.

According to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, two children were injured in attacks on 31 August.

As a result, many children stayed at home, while others spent hours in the basements of schools and kindergartens.

When the sirens sound, it also affects businesses and transport. Shopping centres close and above-ground metro stations suspend operations, often severing public transport links between Kyiv's Left and Right Banks, on either side of the Dnieper River, for hours at a time.

New metro operating rules during air raid alerts are being introduced in an attempt to improve the situation.

For Olha, it has meant seeing less of her eight-year-old granddaughter, who lives on the other side of the city.

She knows if her granddaughter comes to visit, she risks struggling to return home. When metro services stop running, expensive cab journeys are Olha's only option. Crossing the river can cost as much as 1,000 hryvnias ($22, £16.6), she says, just under one-eighth of Ukraine's monthly minimum wage.

The experience has left her frustrated with what she sees as hesitation by some of Ukraine's foreign partners to provide additional air-defence missiles.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly appealed to allies for additional air-defence systems and interceptor missiles.

"They [Ukraine's allies] wait, thinking: 'What if we get attacked?'" Olha says. "It's like refusing to give medicine to a cancer patient because you're saying, 'What if I get sick one day?' Well, maybe you won't. Give it away before it expires."

In another part of the city, mother-of-two Natalia Bushkovska each night rehearses three different plans.

Plan A is to spread bedding in the hallway behind two interior walls; Plan B is to move the family into the building's shared corridor; and Plan C is to head for the basement.

Even there, she admits, she does not feel entirely safe.

"I keep a backpack with essential items," says Natalia, 37. "There's a tourniquet for severe bleeding. I also keep a whistle, just in case.

"If the worst happens, rescuers will be able to find us under the rubble."

Her nine-year-old daughter has her own emergency bag containing toys, lip balm and a tourniquet. Like her 12-year-old brother, she learned how to use a tourniquet through first-aid training.

Natalia says the constant attacks are exhausting.

While her son often sleeps through them, she and her daughter wake up almost every time.

"Because of the attacks, I don't get enough sleep," she says. "Now, in the fifth year of the war, I find it increasingly difficult to bounce back after nights like these."

The growing intensity of the strikes, she says, is taking a psychological toll across the city.

"People are exhausted. They don't have enough time to recover."

On Thursday 17 September, Russia launched a ballistic missile attack on Kyiv. According to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, 20 people were injured in the attack. Among the wounded were two children, aged 10 and 12.

Additional reporting by Janet Ball

Irish police "acted appropriately" during its pursuit of a car which crashed on the wrong side of the road in the Republic of Ireland last month, the police watchdog has found.

Five teenage boys died in the head-on collision on the M9 and four family members were seriously injured in the crash on 16 August.

The police ombudsman Fiosrú said Gardaí (Irish police) had been following the car on the N78 in Athy for a short period before it joined the M9 motorway against the direction of traffic.

Police Ombudsman Emily Logan said the force acted "in line with relevant policies and procedures as determined by the Garda Commissioner".

The watchdog began its investigation into the incident after a mandatory referral from gardaí on 16 August 2026.

Their actions and decisions during interaction with the car were examined, including the nature and extent of garda contact prior to the collision.

The purpose of the investigation was to establish whether gardaí acted in accordance with the law and police policies and procedures.

The investigation found that on 16 August gardaí had pursued a BMW car after permission was granted by the Garda Control Room.

When the BMW entered the M9 dual carriageway the pursuit was terminated and the control room confirmed that it shouldn't continue.

Other garda units attempted to place a stopping device at an appropriate location, however the BMW undertook a number of U-turns, before fatally colliding with an oncoming car.

The five boys in the BMW died and the four family members in the car it collided with were seriously injured.

An Garda Síochána has welcomed the findings and said it will continue to provide supports to officers who attended the scene.

Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly said: "I have previously highlighted the really challenging situation members of An Garda Síochána are put in dealing with such incidents as Gardaí do what they can to stop such vehicles while also taking into consideration all other road users.

"I have also spoken publicly about the need for increased statutory protections for Gardaí when driving as part of their duty to keep people safe."

Logan added that when "someone dies in incidents involving contact with gardaí, it is mandatory that the matter is referred by gardaí to Fiosrú to investigate".

"Fiosrú's investigation was independent of gardaí and aimed to understand events leading up to the collision.

"My thoughts are with family and friends and all those affected by this devastating incident, including the gardaí who attended the scene."

The M9 incident is the sixth time a garda interaction with vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road has been reported between 2021 and 2026.

Meanwhile, Irish broadcaster RTÉ has reported that a 16-year-old boy appeared in court in Dublin on Friday after a Garda car was rammed by a stolen car which was reported to have been driving the wrong way on the M50 and in the Whitehall, Finglas and Ballymun areas of Dublin.

Another teenage boy was arrested in relation to the incident and has since been released with a file to be sent to the youth diversion programme.

Every summer, Seoul turns a deep green, growing dense and lush under humid skies.

But this year, one tree was visibly suffering.

"Green leaves were falling to the ground, which shouldn't happen at that time of year," recalls Jung, who lives near the streetside ginkgo in Buam-dong, a largely residential neighbourhood in the north of Seoul.

The tree is beloved by locals, who believe it has occupied its spot for more than 100 years. So Jung couldn't ignore what she was seeing. With each passing day, her curiosity turned to concern.

A rotting carpet of familiar fan-shaped leaves soon surrounded the tree, a sight so alarming Jung and her neighbours formed a crew of amateur detectives to solve the mystery: what was ailing their hardy ginkgo?

The whodunnit engrossed Buam-dong and piqued the country's interest, making national headlines. But the attention unsettled Jung, who spearheaded the campaign but has since requested anonymity - we are using a pseudonym.