At the time, Israel's air strike against the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

Instead it turned out to be a key moment that has led to a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

This is a goal that he, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world appear to have contributed to this breakthrough.

But, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond control of either man.

A close relationship that Biden never had

In public, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these warm words have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

When Israel began its air strikes against Iran in June, Trump ordered US bombers to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including bombing a Christian church, Trump pressured Netanyahu to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

• LIVE: Trump announces Gaza agreement
• ANALYSIS: Gaza deal is huge moment but just the start

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug" strategy held that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business history helped secure Gulf's backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. He lent American military might to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told the BBC's US partner CBS this was a turning point which galvanised the president to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

• World reacts to first stage of Gaza peace deal
• 'Joy and pain': Palestinians celebrate ceasefire deal
• What we know about the 'first phase' of the Gaza peace deal

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

If Trump's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the room to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them convince Hamas to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that he used to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has committed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the war, which has resulted in the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 Palestinians is now imaginable.

Europeans exert their influence

The global condemnation of Israel over its actions in Gaza also weighed on Trump's thinking.

Conditions on the ground are unprecedented in terms of destruction and the humanitarian catastrophe for Palestinians. Over recent months the Netanyahu government became increasingly isolated internationally.

As Israel took military control of the food supply to Palestinians and then announced a planned assault on Gaza City, several major Europeans countries, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, decided they couldn't stay aligned with Washington's position of unequivocal support for Israel.

A historic split followed between the Americans and European allies when it came to key elements of diplomacy and the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Trump administration castigated France when it said it would recognise a Palestinian state, a move followed by the UK. They were trying to keep the idea of a two-state solution on life support, but more fundamentally marginalise the extremes on both sides and revive a diplomatic path to a shared Israeli-Palestinian future.

But Macron was astute in getting the Saudis on board for his peace plan.

Ultimately Trump was faced with a European-Arab alliance versus Israeli nationalists and the far right when it came to visions for Gaza's longer term future. He chose his friends in the Gulf.

• ANALYSIS: A realistic chance to end the war but not over yet
• What is Hamas and why is it fighting Israel in Gaza?

Under a French-Saudi peace plan, Arab countries also issued an unprecedented condemnation of Hamas' October 7 attacks and called for the group to end its rule on Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority under independent statehood.

This was a diplomatic win for the Arabs and Europeans. Trump's 20-point plan drew on the France-Saudi plan in key areas, including a reference to eventual Palestinian "statehood" even if this was vague and highly conditional.

Trump, while asking Turkey, Qatar and Egypt to maintain pressure on Hamas, boxed in Netanyahu, putting unprecedented pressure on him to end the war.

No-one could be the side to say no to Trump.

Trump's unique style unlocked stalemate

Trump's unorthodox manner still has the capacity to shock. It starts with bluster or bombast but then develops into something more conventional.

In his first term, his "little rocket man" insults and "fire and fury" warnings appeared to be taking the US to the brink of war with North Korea. Instead he engaged in direct talks.

Trump kicked off his second term with an eye-popping suggestion that Palestinians should be required to relocate from Gaza as it was turned into an international oceanfront resort.

Muslim leaders were incensed. Seasoned Middle East diplomats were aghast.

Trump's 20-point peace plan, however, isn't that different from the kind of deal Biden would have struck and that America's allies had long endorsed. A blueprint for a Gaza Riviera it was not.

Trump has taken a very unconventional path to what is a conventional result. It has been messy. It may not be how they teach diplomacy in Ivy League universities. But, at least in this case and at this moment, it has proven effective.

Tomorrow the Nobel Committee will announce this year's Peace Prize winner. And while it is unlikely that Trump will be the recipient, that prospect doesn't seem nearly as unlikely as it did just a few weeks ago.

Additional reporting by Kayla Epstein

New York Attorney General Letitia James has been criminally indicted on federal charges by a grand jury.

James, who led a civil fraud investigation against Trump in 2023, was indicted on charges of bank fraud in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, according to court documents.

Prosecutors accuse James of alleged bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution regarding a mortgage loan for a house in Norfolk, Virginia, the documents state.

In a statement, James accused the president - who recently publicly pressured prosecutors to file criminal charges against her - of a "desperate weaponization of our justice system".

"He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State attorney general," she said.

"These charges are baseless, and the president's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost."

The US prosecutor assigned to the case, Lindsey Halligan, meanwhile, said the case proved that "no one is above the law".

"The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public's trust," she said.

"The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served."

Trump appointed Halligan, his former personal attorney, to oversee the case after another US prosecutor, Erik Siebert, resigned. Siebert was reportedly ousted after he told the justice department he had not found sufficient evidence to charge James.

James' first court appearance is scheduled for 24 October in Norfolk.

The federal government alleges James bought a three-bedroom home in Norfolk using a mortgage loan that required her to use the property as her secondary residence and did not allow for shared ownership or "timesharing" of the home.

The indictment claims the property "was not occupied or used" by James as a secondary residence, but was instead "used as a rental investment property", which was being rented to a family of three.

The "misrepresentation" allowed James to obtain favourable loan terms that would not have been available for an investment property, prosecutors claim.

"We are deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump's desire for revenge," James's attorney, Abbe Lowell, said.

Trump last month called on US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who leads the justice department, in a social media post to prosecute his political opponents, including James.

"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," he wrote.

James was one of several Trump adversaries named in that post. He also called on Bondi to investigate former FBI Director James Comey, who was criminally charged shortly after the post. He pleaded not guilty on Wednesday after being charged with making a false statement to Congress.

The justice department has also reportedly opened investigations into Trump's ex-national security adviser John Bolton and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.

In the civil fraud case brought by James, Trump was found liable of falsifying records to secure better loan deals, leading to a $500m (£375m) fine. The penalty was thrown out by an appeals court, which called the fine excessive, though it upheld that Trump was liable for fraud.

During the case, Trump frequently attacked James outside of the courtroom, accusing her of carrying out a "political witch hunt" against him. James said the courts had ruled that Trump was "not above the law".

Mark Zuckerberg is said to have started work on Koolau Ranch, his sprawling 1,400-acre compound on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, as far back as 2014.

It is set to include a shelter, complete with its own energy and food supplies, though the carpenters and electricians working on the site were banned from talking about it by non-disclosure agreements, according to a report by Wired magazine. A six-foot wall blocked the project from view of a nearby road.

Asked last year if he was creating a doomsday bunker, the Facebook founder gave a flat "no". The underground space spanning some 5,000 square feet is, he explained, is "just like a little shelter, it's like a basement".

That hasn't stopped the speculation - likewise about his decision to buy 11 properties in the Crescent Park neighbourhood of Palo Alto in California, apparently adding a 7,000 square feet underground space beneath.

Though his building permits refer to basements, according to the New York Times, some of his neighbours call it a bunker. Or a billionaire's bat cave.

Then there is the speculation around other Silicon Valley billionaires, some of whom appear to have been busy buying up chunks of land with underground spaces, ripe for conversion into multi-million pound luxury bunkers.

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has talked about "apocalypse insurance". This is something about half of the super-wealthy have, he has previously claimed, with New Zealand a popular destination for homes.

So, could they really be preparing for war, the effects of climate change, or some other catastrophic event the rest of us have yet to know about?

In the last few years, the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has only added to that list of potential existential woes. Many are deeply worried at the sheer speed of the progression.

Ilya Sutskever, chief scientists and a co-founder of the technology company Open AI, is reported to be one them.

By mid-2023, the San Francisco-based firm had released ChatGPT - the chatbot now used by hundreds of millions of people across the world - and they were working fast on updates.

But by that summer, Mr Sutskever was becoming increasingly convinced that computer scientists were on the brink of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) - the point at which machines match human intelligence - according to a book by journalist Karen Hao.

In a meeting, Mr Sutskever suggested to colleagues that they should dig an underground shelter for the company's top scientists before such a powerful technology was released on the world, Ms Hao reports.

"We're definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI," he's widely reported to have said, though it's unclear who he meant by "we".

It sheds light on a strange fact: many leading computer scientists who are working hard to develop a hugely intelligent form of AI, also seem deeply afraid of what it could one day do.

So when exactly - if ever - will AGI arrive? And could it really prove transformational enough to make ordinary people afraid?

An arrival 'sooner than we think'

Tech billionaires have claimed that AGI is imminent. OpenAI boss Sam Altman said in December 2024 that it will come "sooner than most people in the world think".

Sir Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of DeepMind, has predicted in the next five to ten years, while Anthropic founder Dario Amodei wrote last year that his preferred term - "powerful AI" - could be with us as early as 2026.

Others are dubious. "They move the goalposts all the time," says Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at Southampton University. "It depends who you talk to." We are on the phone but I can almost hear the eye-roll.

"The scientific community says AI technology is amazing," she adds, "but it's nowhere near human intelligence."

There would need to be a number of "fundamental breakthroughs" first, agrees Babak Hodjat, chief technology officer of the tech firm Cognizant.

What's more, it's unlikely to arrive as a single moment. Rather, AI is a rapidly advancing technology, it's on a journey and there are many companies around the world racing to develop their own versions of it.

But one reason the idea excites some in Silicon Valley is that it's thought to be a pre-cursor to something even more advanced: ASI, or artificial super intelligence - tech that surpasses human intelligence.

It was back in 1958 that the concept of "the singularity" was attributed posthumously to Hungarian-born mathematician John von Neumann. It refers to the moment when computer intelligence advances beyond human understanding.

More recently, the 2024 book Genesis, written by Eric Schmidt, Craig Mundy and the late Henry Kissinger, explores the idea of a super-powerful technology that becomes so efficient at decision-making and leadership we end up handing control to it completely.

It's a matter of when, not if, they argue.

Money for all, without needing a job?

Those in favour of AGI and ASI are almost evangelical about its benefits. It will find new cures for deadly diseases, solve climate change and invent an inexhaustible supply of clean energy, they argue.

Elon Musk has even claimed that super-intelligent AI could usher in an era of "universal high income".

He recently endorsed the idea that AI will become so cheap and widespread that virtually anyone will want their "own personal R2-D2 and C-3PO" (referencing the droids from Star Wars).

"Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home transport and everything else. Sustainable abundance," he enthused.

There is a scary side, of course. Could the tech be hijacked by terrorists and used as an enormous weapon, or what if it decides for itself that humanity is the cause of the world's problems and destroys us?

"If it's smarter than you, then we have to keep it contained," warned Tim Berners Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, talking to the BBC earlier this month.

"We have to be able to switch it off."

Governments are taking some protective steps. In the US, where many leading AI companies are based, President Biden passed an executive order in 2023 that required some firms to share safety test results with the federal government - though President Trump has since revoked some of the order, calling it a "barrier" to innovation.

Meanwhile in the UK, the AI Safety Institute - a government-funded research body - was set up two years ago to better understand the risks posed by advanced AI.

And then there are those super-rich with their own apocalypse insurance plans.

"Saying you're 'buying a house in New Zealand' is kind of a wink, wink, say no more," Reid Hoffman previously said. The same presumably goes for bunkers.

But there's a distinctly human flaw.

I once met a former bodyguard of one billionaire with his own "bunker", who told me his security team's first priority, if this really did happen, would be to eliminate said boss and get in the bunker themselves. And he didn't seem to be joking.

Is it all alarmist nonsense?

Neil Lawrence is a professor of machine learning at Cambridge University. To him, this whole debate in itself is nonsense.

"The notion of Artificial General Intelligence is as absurd as the notion of an 'Artificial General Vehicle'," he argues.

"The right vehicle is dependent on the context. I used an Airbus A350 to fly to Kenya, I use a car to get to the university each day, I walk to the cafeteria… There's no vehicle that could ever do all of this."

For him, talk about AGI is a distraction.

"The technology we have [already] built allows, for the first time, normal people to directly talk to a machine and potentially have it do what they intend. That is absolutely extraordinary… and utterly transformational.

"The big worry is that we're so drawn in to big tech's narratives about AGI that we're missing the ways in which we need to make things better for people."

Current AI tools are trained on mountains of data and are good at spotting patterns: whether tumour signs in scans or the word most likely to come after another in a particular sequence. But they do not "feel", however convincing their responses may appear.

"There are some 'cheaty' ways to make a Large Language Model (the foundation of AI chatbots) act as if it has memory and learns, but these are unsatisfying and quite inferior to humans," says Mr Hodjat.

Vince Lynch, CEO of the California-based IV.AI, is also wary of overblown declarations about AGI.

"It's great marketing," he says "If you are the company that's building the smartest thing that's ever existed, people are going to want to give you money."

He adds, "It's not a two-years-away thing. It requires so much compute, so much human creativity, so much trial and error."

Asked whether he believes AGI will ever materialise, there's a long pause.

"I really don't know."

Intelligence without consciousness

In some ways, AI has already taken the edge over human brains. A generative AI tool can be an expert in medieval history one minute and solve complex mathematical equations the next.

Some tech companies say they don't always know why their products respond the way they do. Meta says there are some signs of its AI systems improving themselves.

Ultimately, though, no matter how intelligent machines become, biologically the human brain still wins.

It has about 86 billion neurons and 600 trillion synapses, many more than the artificial equivalents. The brain doesn't need to pause between interactions, and it is constantly adapting to new information.

"If you tell a human that life has been found on an exoplanet, they will immediately learn that, and it will affect their world view going forward. For an LLM [Large Language Model], they will only know that as long as you keep repeating this to them as a fact," says Mr Hodjat.

"LLMs also do not have meta-cognition, which means they don't quite know what they know. Humans seem to have an introspective capacity, sometimes referred to as consciousness, that allows them to know what they know."

It is a fundamental part of human intelligence - and one that is yet to be replicated in a lab.

Top picture credits: The Washington Post via Getty Images/ Getty Images MASTER. Lead image shows Mark Zuckerberg (below) and a stock image of an unidentified bunker in an unknown location (above)

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New York Attorney General Letitia James has been criminally indicted on federal charges by a grand jury.

James, who led a civil fraud investigation against Trump in 2023, was indicted on charges of bank fraud in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, according to court documents.

Prosecutors accuse James of alleged bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution regarding a mortgage loan for a house in Norfolk, Virginia, the documents state.

In a statement, James accused the president - who recently publicly pressured prosecutors to file criminal charges against her - of a "desperate weaponization of our justice system".

"He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State attorney general," she said.

"These charges are baseless, and the president's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost."

The US prosecutor assigned to the case, Lindsey Halligan, meanwhile, said the case proved that "no one is above the law".

"The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public's trust," she said.

"The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served."

Trump appointed Halligan, his former personal attorney, to oversee the case after another US prosecutor, Erik Siebert, resigned. Siebert was reportedly ousted after he told the justice department he had not found sufficient evidence to charge James.

James' first court appearance is scheduled for 24 October in Norfolk.

The federal government alleges James bought a three-bedroom home in Norfolk using a mortgage loan that required her to use the property as her secondary residence and did not allow for shared ownership or "timesharing" of the home.

The indictment claims the property "was not occupied or used" by James as a secondary residence, but was instead "used as a rental investment property", which was being rented to a family of three.

The "misrepresentation" allowed James to obtain favourable loan terms that would not have been available for an investment property, prosecutors claim.

"We are deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump's desire for revenge," James's attorney, Abbe Lowell, said.

Trump last month called on US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who leads the justice department, in a social media post to prosecute his political opponents, including James.

"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," he wrote.

James was one of several Trump adversaries named in that post. He also called on Bondi to investigate former FBI Director James Comey, who was criminally charged shortly after the post. He pleaded not guilty on Wednesday after being charged with making a false statement to Congress.

The justice department has also reportedly opened investigations into Trump's ex-national security adviser John Bolton and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.

In the civil fraud case brought by James, Trump was found liable of falsifying records to secure better loan deals, leading to a $500m (£375m) fine. The penalty was thrown out by an appeals court, which called the fine excessive, though it upheld that Trump was liable for fraud.

During the case, Trump frequently attacked James outside of the courtroom, accusing her of carrying out a "political witch hunt" against him. James said the courts had ruled that Trump was "not above the law".

New York Attorney General Letitia James has been criminally indicted on federal charges by a grand jury.

James, who led a civil fraud investigation against Trump in 2023, was indicted on charges of bank fraud in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, according to court documents.

Prosecutors accuse James of alleged bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution regarding a mortgage loan for a house in Norfolk, Virginia, the documents state.

In a statement, James accused the president - who recently publicly pressured prosecutors to file criminal charges against her - of a "desperate weaponization of our justice system".

"He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State attorney general," she said.

"These charges are baseless, and the president's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost."

The US prosecutor assigned to the case, Lindsey Halligan, meanwhile, said the case proved that "no one is above the law".

"The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public's trust," she said.

"The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served."

Trump appointed Halligan, his former personal attorney, to oversee the case after another US prosecutor, Erik Siebert, resigned. Siebert was reportedly ousted after he told the justice department he had not found sufficient evidence to charge James.

James' first court appearance is scheduled for 24 October in Norfolk.

The federal government alleges James bought a three-bedroom home in Norfolk using a mortgage loan that required her to use the property as her secondary residence and did not allow for shared ownership or "timesharing" of the home.

The indictment claims the property "was not occupied or used" by James as a secondary residence, but was instead "used as a rental investment property", which was being rented to a family of three.

The "misrepresentation" allowed James to obtain favourable loan terms that would not have been available for an investment property, prosecutors claim.

"We are deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump's desire for revenge," James's attorney, Abbe Lowell, said.

Trump last month called on US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who leads the justice department, in a social media post to prosecute his political opponents, including James.

"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," he wrote.

James was one of several Trump adversaries named in that post. He also called on Bondi to investigate former FBI Director James Comey, who was criminally charged shortly after the post. He pleaded not guilty on Wednesday after being charged with making a false statement to Congress.

The justice department has also reportedly opened investigations into Trump's ex-national security adviser John Bolton and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.

In the civil fraud case brought by James, Trump was found liable of falsifying records to secure better loan deals, leading to a $500m (£375m) fine. The penalty was thrown out by an appeals court, which called the fine excessive, though it upheld that Trump was liable for fraud.

During the case, Trump frequently attacked James outside of the courtroom, accusing her of carrying out a "political witch hunt" against him. James said the courts had ruled that Trump was "not above the law".

A near-complete skeleton found on Dorset's Jurassic coast has been identified as a new species of ichthyosaur, a type of prehistoric marine reptile that once ruled the oceans.

The dolphin-sized ichthyosaur has been named Xiphodracon goldencapensis, or the "sword dragon of Dorset" and is the only known example of its kind.

Scientists say that marks on its skull suggest that the "sword dragon" may have been killed by a bite to the head, possibly inflicted by a much larger species of ichthyosaur.

First discovered by a prolific fossil hunter at Golden Cap in Dorset in 2001 the new ichthyosaur was then acquired by a museum in Canada.

It has only recently been fully analysed by experts and a paper published identifying it as a new species of ichthyosaur.

"I thought long and hard about the name," said ichthyosaur expert Dr Dean Lomax, who co-authored authored the paper identifying the skeleton as a new species.

"Xiphodracon translates to sword-like dragon and that is in reference to that very long, sword-like snout, but also the fact that ichthyosaurs have been referred to as sea dragons for about 200 years."

Ichthyosaurs are classified as marine reptiles, not dinosaurs, because they spent their lives in the water. This particular ichthyosaur is thought to have swum the seas about 185 million years ago, a period from which very few ichthyosaur fossils have been found.

"During this time ichthyosaurs are incredibly rare, and Xiphodracon is the most complete individual ever found from there, helping to fill a gap," Dr Lomax said. "It's a missing piece of the puzzle in the ichthyosaur evolution."

The "sword dragon" is thought to have been about 3m long and has several features that have not been seen in other species of ichthyosaur. Scientists say the strangest detail is a prong-like bone near its nostril. The skull has an enormous eye socket and a long sword-like snout that it used to eat fish and squid.

There are also clues as to how this particular specimen lived and died.

"The limb bones and teeth are malformed in such a way that points to serious injury or disease while the animal was still alive, " said study co-author Dr Erin Maxwell from the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart.

"The skull appears to have been bitten by a large predator - likely another much larger species of ichthyosaur - giving us a cause of death for this individual. Life in the Mesozoic oceans was a dangerous prospect."

The 'sword dragon' is one of numerous ichthyosaur fossils that have been found along Dorset's Jurassic Coast since the first discoveries of pioneering palaeontologist Mary Anning in the early 1800s.

This "sword dragon" was discovered in 2001 by fossil hunter Chris Moore and then acquired by the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada where it took more than 15 years to be fully analysed.

"I don't wish to blow my own ichthyosaur trumpet but I have found a few of them," Mr Moore said on a video call from Dorset.

The actually number he's unearthed is somewhere in the region of 15, with several of them, like the "sword dragon", turning out to be new species.

Mr Moore says he is planning to celebrate the new discovery but has yet to decide exactly how.

"Champagne or a mug of tea, I'm not sure which yet," he says.

If you've ever felt calmer after a walk in the park or a stroll through the woods, it's not your imagination - it's biology.

Being outdoors can trigger measurable changes inside your body from lowering stress hormones, easing blood pressure and even improving your gut health.

You don't have to hike for hours to feel these benefits as maximum impact happens after just 20 minutes, so even a lunchtime walk to the park and a sandwich on a bench a few times a week can benefit your body and mind.

Here are four ways that being among nature can help improve your health.

1. You unconsciously relax

When you see green trees, smell pine and hear gentle rustling leaves or the sound of birdsong, your autonomic nervous system - a network of nerves controlling unconscious processes - responds instantly.

This can happen on a visit to the local park.

"We see changes in the body such as a lowering of blood pressure and heart rate variability so your heart beats slower," says Baroness Kathy Willis, a biodiversity professor at Oxford University.

A UK study, involving nearly 20,000 people, found that those who spent at least a total of 120 minutes every week in greenery were significantly more likely to report good health and higher psychological well-being.

The evidence for the benefits of spending time in nature is compelling enough that some areas have trialled so called green social prescribing connecting people with nature to improve their phsyical and mental health, with a positive impact on happiness and wellbeing.

2. Your hormones reboot

Your body's hormonal system also joins in the relaxation act.

Willis says that spending time outdoors lowers levels of cortisol and adrenaline - the hormones that surge when you're stressed or anxious.

"A study found that people in a hotel room for three days who were breathing in Hinoki (Japanese cypress) oil saw a big drop in the adrenaline hormone and a big increase in natural killer cells."

Natural killer cells are cells that tackle viruses in the body. The participants in the study still had elevated natural killer cells in their body two weeks after inhaling the smell.

Essentially nature "calms what needs calming and strengthens what needs strengthening," is how Prof Ming Kuo from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, summed it up to the BBC.

"A three-day weekend in nature has a huge impact on our virus fighting apparatus and even a month later it can be 24% above baseline."

Studies also show smaller but still persistent effects from shorter periods spent in nature, she says.

3. Smell is a powerful sense

Smelling nature is just as powerful as seeing and hearing it.

The scent of trees and soil is full of organic compounds released by plants and "when you breathe them in, some molecules pass into the bloodstream."

Willis says pine is a good example of this as the smell of a pine forest can make you calmer within just 20 seconds and that effect lasts for about 10 minutes.

You may think that the relaxing effect of nature is all in your mind, but another study found that even very young babies with no memory associated with particular smells, still calmed down when a pine scent was diffused into the room they were in.

4. Gets good bacteria into your gut

As well as soothing your mind, nature can also help boost your microbiome as soil and plants are full of good bacteria.

"They're the same kinds of good bacteria we pay for in probiotics or drinks," Willis explains.

Prof Ming Kuo has studied the effect on factors such as infection susceptibility as well as mental health and says breathing in certain ones have the potential to boost your mood; and the antimicrobial chemicals released by plants – called phytoncides – could help fight disease.

Dr Chris van Tulleken says as an infection scientist he sees nature as a positively challenging environment that "tickles your immune system".

He gets his children to play with dirt in the forest which then enters their system through the nose or mouth.

Bring nature to you

Of course, not everyone can head into the woods on a whim but the good news is, you don't have to.

Even small touches of nature at home can make a difference, according to Willis.

Visually, flowers such as white or yellow roses have been shown to create the greatest calming effect on brain activity.

When it comes to smell, use a diffuser with essential oils like lavender which can help you relax.

And if all else fails, even a photo of a forest can help.

Research shows that looking at pictures of nature on your laptop or simply gazing out at something green can trigger the same calming brainwave changes and reduce stress.

"Every bit seems to help," says Prof Ming Kuo.

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"A new challenger has appeared."

In the fiercely competitive world of video games, it's common for new contenders to fade away as quickly as they burst on to the scene.

But Battlefield 6 is hoping to change that.

It's the latest entry in a long-running military shooter series often framed as a grittier, more realistic answer to Call of Duty.

The title's never quite managed to match its most famous rival in terms of sales or players, but there are signs the new installment could close the gap.

A preview weekend giving players a chance to try out the game earlier this year broke records, and the buzz heading into its launch has been huge.

But the project is still a big gamble for publisher Electronic Arts (EA), which has reportedly spent hundreds of millions of dollars making it.

BBC Newsbeat's spoken to some of the makers to find out how they hope it will pay off.

Four EA-owned studios have been working on the game under the Battlefield Studios banner.

They include original series developer Dice, based in Sweden, LA's Motive Studios and Ripple Effect Studios in Canada.

The fourth, Criterion, is based in Guildford, UK.

Rebecka Coutaz is the general manager of the two European studios, and tells Newsbeat that, in terms of what it's offering players, "Battlefield 6 is probably unbeatable".

The game comes off the back of the futuristic Battlefield 2042, released four years ago to a negative reception it struggled to recover from.

"We probably couldn't make and develop Battlefield 6 without the learnings we had in Battlefield 2042," Rebekah tells Newsbeat.

One of those lessons was to get fans involved early, and the team launched invite-only community playtests earlier this year.

The "feedback was explosively positive," says Rebecka.

Another missing ingredient from Battlefield 2042 was a single-player campaign, which has been restored this time around.

Criterion design director Fasahat "Fas" Salim is the one in charge of "making sure those missions are as fun and interesting as possible for the players".

Despite claims that the scale of the project had put a strain on the different studios collaborating across continents to build the game, Fas is positive about the process.

"Collaborating with different cultures, different backgrounds, it's a really interesting environment to be involved in every day," he says.

"This whole approach has been something new but something really exciting because we are working with people from all over the world."

As for the expectation on the team, Fas says: "There is pressure but also it's exciting.

"It's a big project. It's probably the biggest that most of us have ever worked on."

That's definitely true of at least one team member, lighting artist Vlad Kokhan.

The 21-year-old makes the atmospheric effects that shape the mood, tone, and direction of the single-player campaign.

He completed an internship at Criterion before getting a job there, and currently works part-time while finishing his visual effects degree at Bournemouth University.

Vlad says he's a long-time fan of the Battlefield series, and remembers playing the fourth instalment of the series at a friend's house when he was younger.

To be working on it now, as his first industry job, "doesn't feel real".

"It's really crazy seeing the marketing everywhere", he says.

"To know that I've put my own thing into the game is really surreal."

Battlefield 6's launch is expected to be a big one, with analysts predicting it could sell up to five millions copies in its first week.

But its real success in a volatile and unpredictable industry won't be clear for months, if not years.

To maintain the momentum, it will need to draw - and keep - players away from rivals including CoD, Fortnite and Roblox.

But while the signs are promising, Rebecka is cautious when asked if she is feeling confident.

"I would say yes and no, you never know," she says.

"The only thing that matters to me now - and I've been saying it for four years - is that we don't disappoint our community, our players."

Concerns for Battlefield's future were also sparked by recent news that EA had agreed to sell the company to a Saudi Arabia-led group for $55bn (£41bn).

EA has taken on $20bn (£14bn) of debt as part of the deal - known as a leveraged buyout - prompting fans to fear of cutbacks.

The company has told staff to expect "no immediate changes" to their jobs.

For Battlefield 6, Rebecka tells Newsbeat the team will continue as planned, and has already shared details for monthly updates and content additions.

"I am here to help our team members make their best work in their careers so the way hasn't changed for me, the way is still the same," she insists.

EA has been vocal about its plans to use generative AI in game development, and its prospective new owners are betting on the technology to boost profits, according to The Financial Times.

The tools are controversial, prompting concerns from developers and backlash from some fans.

Rebecka tells Newsbeat players won't see anything made by GenAI within Battlefield 6, but it is used in preparatory stages to "to allow more time and more space to be creative."

Rebecka says GenAI "is very seducing", but there isn't currently a way to incorporate it into developer's daily work.

Yet she shares EA's optimism for its potential.

"If we can break the magic with AI it will help us be more innovative and more creative," she says.

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In Fas's opinion, GenAI is "not anything to be scared of in our industry".

"Especially as we work in an environment at the bleeding edge of technology - we're kind of used to things changing," he says.

"It's just a matter of how we can incorporate that productively into our workflows, how can we leverage that to take our games to the next level."

For now, though, the team's focus is on nailing Battlefield 6's release.

"We spend a lot of time behind closed doors making these things," says Fas.

"But when it goes into the players' hands and you see them having a great time, people shouting, people excited, that's something that we worked years for.

"This is what most of us game developers look forward to. We just want to see people play the thing and then get excited about it."

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.

"This technology is our future threat," warns Serhiy Beskrestnov, who has just got his hands on a newly intercepted Russian drone.

It was no ordinary drone either, he discovered. Assisted by artificial intelligence, this unmanned aerial vehicle can find and attack targets on its own.

Beskrestnov has examined numerous drones in his role as Ukrainian defence forces consultant.

Unlike other models, it didn't send or receive any signals, so could not be jammed.

Russian and Ukrainian forces have both been testing AI in this war, and in some areas they are already using it, for finding targets, gathering intelligence and de-mining.

And for the Ukrainian army, AI has become indispensable.

"Our military gets more than 50,000 video streams [from the front line] every month which are analysed by artificial intelligence," says Ukraine's deputy defence minister, Yuriy Myronenko.

"This helps us quickly process this massive data, identify targets and place them on a map."

AI-empowered tech is seen as a tool that can enhance strategic planning, make the most of resources and ultimately save lives.

But when it comes to unmanned weapons systems, it is also transforming the battlefield.

Ukrainian troops already use AI-based software so that drones lock on a target and then fly autonomously for the last few hundred metres until the mission is over.

Jamming is impossible and shooting down such a small flying object is not easy.

Ultimately these systems are expected to evolve into fully autonomous weapons that can find and destroy targets on their own.

All a soldier will need to do is press a button on a smartphone app, explains Yaroslav Azhnyuk, chief executive of Ukrainian developer The Fourth Law.

The drone will do the rest, he says, finding the target, dropping explosives, assessing the damage and then returning to base.

"And it would not even require piloting skills from the soldier," he adds.

Interceptor drones with that kind of automation could significantly strengthen air defences against Russian long-range attack drones, such as the notorious Shaheds.

"A computer-guided autonomous system can be better than a human in so many ways," says Azhnyuk. "It can be more perceptive. It can see the target sooner than a human can. It can be more agile."

Yuriy Myronenko says that kind of system does not exist yet, but he suggests Ukraine is close to finishing its development. "We have partly implemented it in some devices," says the deputy defence minister.

There could even be thousands of such systems in place by the end of 2026, claims Azhnyuk.

But Ukrainian developers are cautious about fully making use of defence systems that rely entirely on AI, with no human involvement. The risk is that AI may fail to distinguish a Ukrainian soldier from a Russian, as they may be wearing the same uniform, says Vadym, who declined to give his surname.

His company DevDroid makes remotely controlled machine guns, that use AI to automatically detect people and track them. Because of concerns over friendly fire, he says they don't have an automatic shooting option.

"We can enable it, but we need to get more experience and more feedback from the ground forces in order to understand when it is safe to use this feature."

There are also fears that automated systems will violate the rules of war. How will they avoid harming civilians, or distinguish soldiers who want to surrender?

For the deputy defence minister, the final decision in such circumstances should rest with a human, although AI would make it "easier to decide". But there are no guarantees that states or armed groups will adhere to international humanitarian norms.

So counteracting these systems becomes even more critical.

How do you stop a "swarm of drones" when jamming or using jets, tanks or missiles is rendered ineffective?

Ukraine's highly successful "Spider Web" operation, when 100 drones targeted Russian air bases last June, was probably assisted by AI tools.

Many in Ukraine fear that Moscow will copy that tactic, not just on the front line but beyond it too.

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky warned the UN last month that AI was contributing to "the most destructive arms race in human history".

He called for global rules for the use of AI in weapons, and said the issue was "just as urgent as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons".