The Maldives has banned young people born on or after 1 January 2007 from smoking tobacco, becoming the only country in the world to enforce a nationwide generational tobacco prohibition.

The archipelago's health ministry announced on Saturday that it would be illegal for younger generations to use, buy or sell tobacco within the country.

The ban "reflects the government's strong commitment to protecting young people from the harms of tobacco", the ministry said.

Ahmed Afaal, vice chair of the archipelago's tobacco control board, told BBC World Service's Newshour programme that the country's general vaping ban last year had been a "good step towards a generation of tobacco-free citizens".

The new ban "applies to all forms of tobacco, and retailers are required to verify age prior to sale", the health ministry said, adding that it aligned with the Maldives' obligations under the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

According to the UN's health body, this convention "provides a global response to a global problem – namely, the tobacco epidemic".

Mr Afaal said the country's crackdown on vaping had been an important first step because "these new stylish gadgets are tactics of the industry to approach the younger generations to uptake addictive processes, which definitely harms their health".

Last year, the Maldives made it illegal for anyone to import, sell, possess, use or distribute electronic cigarettes and vaping products, regardless of age.

Tourists coming to visit the Maldives' islands will also have to adhere to the law, but Mr Afaal argues the smoking ban will not have a detrimental impact on tourism.

"People don't come to the Maldives because they're able to smoke. They come for the beaches, they come for the sea, they come for the sun, and they come for the fresh air," he added.

Quoting tourism data, Mr Afaal argued that despite the new regulations there had been no tourist cancellations and the number of arrivals had grown in the past year.

"We're projecting more than 2m [tourists] in the next year," he said.

Plans by New Zealand to pass a generational smoking ban were scrapped in 2023 after a new government took power.

The move was seen as a blow to many health experts and Māori people in particular, who have one of the highest smoking rates.

Last year, the UK's then-Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, had hoped to introduce a law that would ban young people born on or after 2009 from smoking.

A new version of the legislation, introduced by the current government, has passed through the Commons and is now at the committee stage at the House of Lords - nearing its last hurdles before it gets royal assent.

The sole survivor of the Air India plane crash, which killed 241 people on board, has said he feels like the "luckiest man" alive, but is also suffering physically and mentally.

Viswashkumar Ramesh walked away from the wreckage of the London-bound flight in Ahmedabad in extraordinary scenes that amazed the world.

He said it was a "miracle" he escaped but told how he has lost everything, as his younger brother Ajay was a few seats away on the flight and died in the crash in June.

Since returning to his home in Leicester, Mr Ramesh has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), his advisers said, and has been unable to speak to his wife and four-year-old son.

Flames engulfed the Boeing 787 flight when it went down shortly after take-off in western India.

Shocking video shared at the time showed Mr Ramesh walking away from the aftermath with seemingly superficial injuries, as smoke billowed in the background.

Speaking to BBC News, an emotional Mr Ramesh, whose first language is Gujarati, said: "I'm only one survivor. Still, I'm not believing. It's a miracle.

"I lost my brother as well. My brother is my backbone. Last few years, he was always supporting me."

He described the devastating impact the ordeal has had on his family life.

"Now I'm alone. I just sit in my room alone, not talking with my wife, my son. I just like to be alone in my house," Mr Ramesh said.

He spoke from his hospital bed in India at the time, describing how he had managed to unbuckle himself and crawl out of the wreckage, and met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi while receiving treatment for his injuries.

Of the passengers and crew killed, 169 were Indian nationals and 52 were Britons, while 19 others were killed on the ground.

A preliminary report into the crash, published by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau in July, said fuel supply to the engines was cut off just seconds after take-off. Meanwhile, an investigation is ongoing and the airline said care for Mr Ramesh, and all families affected by the tragedy, "remains our absolute priority".

This is the first time the 39-year-old has spoken to the media since he has been back in the UK. A documentary crew were also filming in the room.

The BBC had detailed discussions with his advisers around his duty of care before the interview.

When asked about his memories of the day of the crash, he said: "I can't say anything about that now."

'I'm suffering'

Flanked by local community leader Sanjiv Patel and spokesman Radd Seiger, Mr Ramesh said it was too painful to recall the events of the disaster, and broke down during parts of an interview at the home of Mr Patel in Leicester.

Mr Ramesh described the anguish he and his family are now living through.

"For me, after this accident... very difficult.

"Physically, mentally, also my family as well, mentally... my mum last four months, she is sitting every day outside the door, not talking, nothing.

"I'm not talking to anyone else. I do not like to talk with anyone else.

"I can't talk about much. I'm thinking all night, I'm suffering mentally.

"Every day is painful for the whole family."

Mr Ramesh also spoke about the physical injuries he suffered in the crash, which saw him escape his seat - 11A - through an opening in the fuselage.

He says he suffers pain in his leg, shoulder, knee and back, and has not been able to work or drive since the tragedy.

"When I walk, not walk properly, slowly, slowly, my wife help," he added.

Mr Ramesh was diagnosed with PTSD while he was being treated in hospital in India but has not received any medical treatment since being back home, his advisers said.

They described him as being lost and broken, with a long journey of recovery ahead, and are demanding a meeting with Air India's executives, claiming he has been treated poorly by the airline since the crash.

"They're in crisis, mentally, physically, financially," Mr Patel said.

"It's devastated his family.

"Whoever's responsible at the highest level should be on the ground meeting the victims of this tragic event, and understanding their needs and to be heard."

'Put things right'

Air India has offered an interim compensation payment to Mr Ramesh of £21,500, which has been accepted, but his advisers say this is not enough to meet his immediate needs.

The family fishing business in Diu in India, which Mr Ramesh ran with his brother before the crash, has since collasped, his advisers said.

Spokesman for the family Mr Seiger said they had invited Air India for a meeting on three occasions, and all three were either "ignored or turned down".

The media interviews were the team's way of reissuing that appeal for the fourth time, he said.

Mr Seiger added: "It's appalling that we are having to sit here today and putting him [Viswashkumar] through this.

"The people who should be sitting here today are the executives of Air India, the people responsible for trying to put things right.

"Please come and sit down with us so that we can work through this together to try and alleviate some of this suffering."

In a statement, the airline, which is owned by Tata Group, said senior leaders from the parent company continue to visit families to express their deepest condolences.

"An offer has been made to Mr Ramesh's representatives to arrange such a meeting, we will continue to reach out and we very much hope to receive a positive response," it said.

The airline told the BBC that this offer was made before the media interviews with Mr Ramesh.

Not many people can say they've been given a private piano recital by Sir Anthony Hopkins.

But that's exactly what happened when our four-strong BBC team went to interview the double Oscar-winning actor in Los Angeles.

We were in the same room as the man who terrified as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, shattered as a butler in The Remains of The Day and devastated as a dad with dementia in The Father.

An actor who was cast by Oliver Stone as President Nixon because - according to Sir Anthony - the director said "you're nuts like Nixon".

At a grand piano in a hotel in Beverly Hills, as he plays us a piece he calls Goodbye, it's clear an artistic soul exudes from his every pore. Haunting notes of music, lines of poetry and Shakespearean verses cascade out of him.

We were meeting because Sir Anthony's publishing his autobiography, We Did OK, Kid, an honest and at times upsetting account of a loner who was bullied and written off as a child in Wales and became one of Britain's finest acting exports.

He puts his success down to sheer luck, telling me: "I couldn't take credit for any of it, I couldn't have planned any of this - and now at 87, about to turn 88, I get up in the morning and I think, 'Hello, I'm still here,' and I still don't get it."

From the outside, it looks less about luck and more about his deep understanding of human emotion, as his performances testify. I ask what makes him such an instinctive actor.

"It's such a miracle being alive," he says.

He finds the complexity of human beings "fascinating... I mean, how can you produce Beethoven, Bach and then Treblinka and Auschwitz?"

Sir Anthony has always understood the duality of being human, and it explains his acting range.

He got his first break on film when the actor Peter O'Toole suggested he audition for the 1968 movie The Lion in Winter, in which O'Toole was playing Henry II.

At that point, Sir Anthony had been a member of Sir Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company for several years. But, he recalls: "I couldn't fit into the British theatre style, I just felt out of it."

He also "didn't want to be standing on stage holding a spear for the rest of my life, in wrinkled tights, I just wanted to have a bit of a life".

He was cast as Richard the Lionheart and couldn't believe that a baker's son from Port Talbot was working with Katharine Hepburn.

The actress, playing his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, gave him "the best advice I've had" as they rehearsed their first scene together. She told him to "just speak the lines... Don't act, just do it". She also said he was "real good".

Hepburn was right, of course. Some classically trained theatre actors, particularly back then, didn't appreciate how much they needed to adjust their performance for the intimacy of a camera. He did.

He doesn't much care for talking about the craft of acting, or certainly the reverence there can be around it, but he shares his method with me: "Be still. Be economic. Don't act or twitch around, you know, 'showing off' acting... simplify, simplify, simplify'."

His performances stand out because he's an actor of huge emotional depth and psychological insight. Think of him as Dr Treves, the friend and protector of John Hurt's Elephant Man.

Or as Lecter, still for me the most terrifying of characters more than 30 years on. The serial killer is a monster but Sir Anthony understood that less is more, on screen.

Instead of playing Lecter as obviously monstrous, "you go the opposite way, you draw back", he explains. He realised as soon as he had read a few pages of the script that the role was "a life-changer".

He writes in his memoir that he "instinctively sensed how to play Hannibal. I have the devil in me. We all have the devil in us, I know what scares people".

He tells me he played Lecter still - and deadly. So when he was in character opposite other actors, he decided, "Don't take your eyes off the person. That's terrifying."

He puts on Lecter's metallic rasp for me and appears to enjoy repeating his character's words to Jodie Foster's Clarice. "You're not real FBI," he almost hisses.

"That's scary," he says. He's not wrong. Even in an upmarket LA hotel on a warm autumn afternoon, I'm feeling chilled.

And what about the famous line - "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti", which he follows with that vampire-like hiss?

He explains as a child he'd seen the Hungarian-American actor Bela Lugosi do the same when playing Count Dracula in the 1931 movie. Sir Anthony decided in the moment of filming to copy it and The Silence of the Lambs director, Jonathan Demme, kept it in.

What is startling about the memoir is the disconnect between how the world viewed the young actor and how much it was clearly missing about him. He was bullied at school for what other kids saw as his large "elephant" head.

He was slapped around by teachers who deemed him a complete dunce. Even his parents pretty much wrote him off.

He believes it was the making of him. It "gave me a core of anger, resentment and revenge", he says.

But why hadn't they all noticed his talents? This was a child who was given the 10 volume Children's Encyclopaedia when he was six ("I was so captivated, I read every one of them") and became fascinated by astronomy.

A boy who played the piano, made art and loved Dickens and Shakespeare, quoting from them extensively.

A school report in 1955 when he was 17 marked "the turning point" in his life. It was terrible, as usual. "What's going to happen to you?" Sir Anthony recalls his father lamenting. "I said: 'One day, I'll show you, both of you'."

He's pleased his parents lived long enough to see him succeed. When he won his first best actor Oscar, for The Silence of the Lambs in 1992, 11 years to the day after his father died, he rang his mother in Wales and said: "I guess I did OK."

But it was a rough ride in the early days. He was an alcoholic who picked fights with directors and others. He wasn't always a good husband to his first two wives. Booze turned him nasty.

"That's the ugly side of alcoholism," he writes. "It brought out a brutal side of me. I'm not proud of it at all."

The anger, he believes, came "from inside, my own insecurities, being bullied at school and all the rest of it. I didn't like authority".

Then one night in LA in December 1975, almost 50 years ago, he drove his car while in "a complete alcoholic blackout". When he came to, he realised that he was "out of control" and could have killed someone. He made a phone call to ask for help.

"Suddenly, something said 'it's all over, now you can start living'... the craving left and it's never come back."

At his first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, he had a realisation about everyone else in the room.

"They're all misfits like me. Like all of us. We feel we never belong. We feel self-hatred. All of us are the same. I'm not alone."

It's that feeling of disconnection that shines out of the book.

He writes that his wife Stella believes he is on the autism spectrum which is "likely right, given my proclivity for memorisation and repetition... and my lack of emotionality" but he says he prefers the term "cold fish". I want to know why.

It seems to have begun as a reaction to the bullying and screaming at him through school and National Service.

"I'd just stare them out, and that drove them mad," he recalls. "You withdraw into yourself and think, 'OK you can't hurt me, can you?" It was, he says, his "only defence... and that's a power, you see: I don't care."

Of course, Sir Anthony does care and we talk a little about the state of the world. It's at this point in our interview that he becomes his most passionate. He grew up in Port Talbot surrounded by people who had been impacted, even brutalised, by war.

He played Sir Nicholas Winton, the man who saved hundreds of mainly Jewish children from the Nazis, in the film One Life.

When I ask him about whether he worries about increasing polarisation now, he becomes very animated and intense.

"The world has always been a place of utter turmoil. But I think if we go on in this way of hatred... we are dead.

"Nobody's allowed to have an opinion. Nobody can have a different view. That's fascism. And it's insanity."

If he has any advice about it all, it's to say "'Come on, stop this rubbish, beating each other up over ideas. They're only ideas and we're only going to be dead one day'."

Sir Anthony Hopkins' best performances

I ask him, as he looks back at his long life, what his biggest regrets are and he's quick to answer. "People I've hurt over the years, the stupid things I did."

He's estranged from his only child, his daughter Abigail, who he walked out on when she was just one and he was in the depths of alcoholism.

He writes that "after realising I was unfit as a father for Abigail, I vowed not to have any more children... I couldn't do to another child what I'd done to her".

He has tried to repair their relationship over the years.

When he took on the role of King Lear in his 80s, in Sir Richard Eyre's 2018 film, Lear's words to his daughter Cordelia struck a painful chord.

He writes in his new book: "The line that hit me harder than perhaps any other I've ever spoken was 'I did her wrong'. Saying those words, I felt deeply, perhaps for the first time in my life, how I had hurt my own daughter.

"I remembered how as a baby she'd lit up when I walked into the room. I remembered how I said goodbye to her the night I walked out. I remembered how I had tried and failed to win her back later. I remembered how I had given up. And as Lear, but also as myself, I began to cry."

He didn't want to talk about it in our interview. Poignantly, in this section of the book, he writes: "I hope my daughter knows that my door is always open to her."

I couldn't help feeling moved reading this. It's as if he is trying to send a message to her, hoping against hope that there might be a reconciliation before it is too late.

At 87, he is looking back, aware he has lived many years longer than he has left to live. "Most of my friends have died, they're gone, God bless them," he says. "I hope to be around a little longer. But even that, I'm thinking, 'oh well, I had a good time'."

He certainly still appears to be having fun. After some early reserve when we first met, he quickly relaxed. When he played the piano, he shared how he had lost two much-loved pianos when his house burnt down in the LA fires earlier this year. "They were all under the rubble".

As we walked through the hotel lobby together, he was spotted by guests and waved happily to them. "I like to say hi because people think actors are special. We're not at all," he smiles.

Whatever he says, it was special to spend a few hours in his presence. He's an acting legend who's given us six decades of memorable performances. He's also a genuine heavyweight who is steeped not just in musical knowledge, but culture, history and philosophy.

And we end the interview on a philosophical note - as he recites "They are not long, the days of wine and roses" from an Ernest Dowson poem and muses on the fleeting nature of life.

"What are we doing here, what are we?" he asks. "We can't explain anything about ourselves. We may have fancy ideas, religious ideas, philosophical ideas, scientific ideas... what's that all about? We're nothing finally, and yet we're everything".

We Did OK, Kid by Sir Anthony Hopkins is published on 4 November.

The former top lawyer in the Israeli military has been arrested, as a political showdown deepens over the leaking of a video that allegedly shows severe abuse of a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers.

Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned as the Military Advocate General of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) last week, saying that she took full responsibility for the leak.

On Sunday, the story took a darker turn when she was reported as missing, with police mounting an hours-long search for her on a beach north of Tel Aviv.

She was subsequently found alive and well, police said, but was then taken into custody.

The fallout from the leaked video is intensifying by the day.

Broadcast in August 2024 on an Israeli news channel, the footage shows reserve soldiers at the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel taking aside a detainee, then surrounding him with riot shields to block visibility while he was allegedly beaten and stabbed in the rectum with a sharp object.

The detainee was subsequently treated for severe injuries.

Five reservists were subsequently charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm to the detainee. They have denied the charges have not been named.

On Sunday, four of the reservists wore black balaclavas to hide their faces as they appeared at a news conference outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem along with their lawyers, who demanded the dismissal of their trial.

Adi Keidar, a lawyer from the right-wing legal aid organisation Honenu, claimed his clients were subject to "to a faulty, biased and completely cooked-up legal process".

Last week, a criminal investigation was launched into the leaking of the video.

Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi was put on leave while the inquiry took place.

On Friday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said she would not be allowed to return to her post.

Shortly after that, Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned.

In her resignation letter, she said she took full responsibility for any material that was released to the media from the unit.

"I approved the release of material to the media in an attempt to counter false propaganda against the army's law enforcement authorities," she said.

That is a reference to efforts by some right-wing political figures in Israel to claim that the allegations of severe abuse of the Palestinian detainee had been fabricated.

She added: "It is our duty to investigate whenever there is reasonable suspicion of acts of violence against a detainee."

After her resignation, Katz issued a fierce condemnation of her conduct.

"Anyone who spreads blood libels against IDF troops is unfit to wear the army's uniform," he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed his defence minister's words on Sunday, saying that the incident at Sde Teiman was "perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the State of Israel has experienced since its establishment".

Hours later, the first reports began appearing in the Israeli media that Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi was missing, sparking fears that a political scandal had taken a turn towards tragedy.

A massive search effort was launched. Several hours later, she was found "safe and in good health" in the coastal area of Herzliya, Israeli police said.

Overnight, a police spokesperson announced that two people had been arrested on suspicion of "leaking and other serious criminal offences" as part of an investigation.

Israeli media reported that the pair were Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi and the former chief military prosecutor, Col Matan Solomosh.

The Sde Teiman incident has been a lightning rod for the division between the left and right in Israel.

On the right, the leaking of the video is denounced as a defamation of the Israeli military, all but amounting to an act of treason.

After Israeli military police went to Sde Teiman to question 11 reservists over the incident in July 2024, far-right protesters - including at least three lawmakers from Netanyahu's governing coalition - broke into the facility to show their support.

On the left, Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi's decision to enable the footage to be released is seen as the one time she lived up to the responsibilities of her post.

The video is regarded by the left as concrete evidence backing up multiple reports of abuse of Palestinian detainees since the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel.

Last October, a report by a UN commission of inquiry alleged that thousands of child and adult detainees from Gaza had been "subjected to widespread and systematic abuse, physical and psychological violence, and sexual and gender-based violence amounting to the war crime and crime against humanity of torture and the war crime of rape and other forms of sexual violence".

Israel's government said it rejected the accusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees, and insisted that it was "fully committed to international legal standards". It also said it had carried out thorough investigations into every complaint.

Strictly Come Dancing's Amy Dowden has announced she is to undergo "another mastectomy this week".

The 35-year-old said the surgery was "not to treat a new cancer diagnosis" but came following an appointment with her "incredible" medical team, adding that she wanted to be "clear" and "open" with her followers.

In a post on Instagram, accompanied by a video of her stroking her dog, the Welsh star said: "They're [the medical team] confident that, all going well, I can expect a straightforward recovery.

"Once I have healed I look forward to rejoining my Strictly family."

She added that she would "of course" miss not being part of the show as much but would be "watching from home and look forward to cheering everyone on".

"Thank you always for all the support," said Dowden.

The dancer revealed she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2023 after finding a lump in April, the day before going to the Maldives on her honeymoon with fellow professional dancer Ben Jones.

After her diagnosis, Dowden had a mastectomy and underwent chemotherapy, with her treatment preventing her from being able to compete with a celebrity partner on the BBC dancing programme that year.

Dowden documented her cancer experience online, and revealed in February 2024 that "no evidence of disease" was found at her latest health check.

She returned to the dancefloor a few months later, partnered with former JLS star JB Gill.

However, she was forced to pull out of Strictly midway through the 20th anniversary series due to an injury and was replaced by Lauren Oakley.

Dowden returned once again in this year's series where she was partnered with former Apprentice contestant and social media star Thomas Skinner, being eliminated in week two.

Her cancer treatment and experience with Crohn's disease have been depicted in the BBC documentaries Strictly Amy: Cancer And Me and Strictly Amy: Crohn's And Me.

She was formally made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) earlier in the year for services to fundraising and raising awareness of the inflammatory bowel disease.

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