There are "no plans" for US President Donald Trump to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a White House official has stated.

Last Thursday Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.

A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov was due to be held this week - but the White House said the two had had a "productive" call and that a meeting was no longer "necessary".

The White House did not share any more details on why the talks had been put on hold.

On Monday Trump embraced the idea of freezing the Ukrainian conflict on the current front line.

"Let it be cut the way it is," he said on Monday, referring to the contested region of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has repeatedly pushed back against freezing the current line of contact.

Moscow was only interested in "long-term, sustainable peace", Lavrov said on Tuesday, implying that freezing the front line would only amount to a temporary ceasefire.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

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Israel has received two bodies that Hamas says are two more deceased hostages who had been held in Gaza.

The Israeli military said two coffins were handed over to troops in the Palestinian territory by the Red Cross, which had earlier received them from Hamas.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the coffins - which were escorted by the military - had crossed into Israel and will be taken to be formally identified in Tel Aviv.

Confirmation of their identies would mean that Hamas has transferred 15 out of 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal earlier this month. All 20 living hostages were released shortly after the agreement was reached.

Hamas has handed over a Palestinian body in a previous hostage transfers, which it said was accidental due to difficulties locating the bodies.

The IDF urged the Israeli public on Tuesday evening to "act with sensitivity and wait for the official identification, which will first be provided to the families of the hostages".

It also stressed that "Hamas is required to uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the deceased hostages".

Israeli officials said the families of the hostages will be notified once the bodies are identified.

There has been outrage in Israel that Hamas has not yet returned all the deceased hostages.

The Palestinian group says it is trying to do this but that it faces difficulty finding bodies under rubble of buildings bombed out by the IDF in Gaza.

Under the ceasefire and hostage release agreement, Israel has freed 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza, and returned 15 bodies of Palestinians for every Israeli hostage's remains.

The first phase of the agreement has also seen an increase of aid into Gaza, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, and a halt in fighting - though deadly violence flared up over the weekend as both sides accused one another of breaching the terms of the deal.

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

More than 68,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen by the UN as reliable.

Colombia's former president has had two convictions for fraud and bribery overturned after he was sentenced to 12 years of house arrest.

Alvaro Uribe became the first Colombian leader to be criminally convicted after a trial in August in which a judge handed the 73-year-old the maximum sentence.

The case against him was linked to claims he ordered a lawyer to bribe jailed paramilitaries to discredit claims he had ties to their organisations. Uribe has always maintained his innocence.

The right-wing politician, who was president between 2002 and 2010, is best known for waging an aggressive offensive against left-wing Farc rebels and remains an influential figure in the South American nation.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously criticised Uribe's conviction, arguing that his only crime "has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland".

Uribe was originally convicted, in part, on testimony from a former paramilitary commander, Luis Carlos Velez, who said he had been paid bribes by the president's lawyer, Diego Cadena.

But the Superior Court in the capital, Bogotá, found that the ex-commander's testimony lacked credibility.

In its 700-page decision overturning the convictions, the court also found that some of the wiretaps used to open a formal investigation into Uribe had been obtained illegally.

The ruling can be appealed by people classed as victims in the case.

Colombia's current and first left-wing President Gustavo Petro denounced the outcome.

He wrote on X: "This is how the history of paramilitary governance in Colombia is covered up, that is, the history of politicians who came to power allied with drug trafficking."

Paramilitary groups emerged in Colombia in the 1980s to fight the Marxist-inspired guerrilla groups that had been battling the state since the 1960s.

Many of the armed groups that developed in the conflict made an income from the cocaine trade. Deadly fighting between them and with the state has produced lasting rivalries for trafficking routes and resources.

Right-wing paramilitary groups have been found responsible for massacres, disappearances and other atrocities.

Some left-wing guerilla outfits have also been found to have been involved in massacres and threats against Colombian citizens, according to Human Rights Watch.

US Vice-President JD Vance has arrived in Israel as part of the Trump administration's efforts to strengthen the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

He is expected to push the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to start negotiations on long-term issues for a permanent end to the war with Hamas.

The two special US envoys who helped negotiate the deal, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, also held talks with Netanyahu on Monday.

Their visits come after a flare-up of violence on Sunday that threatened to derail the 12-day-old truce. Israel said a Hamas attack killed two soldiers, triggering Israeli air strikes which killed dozens of Palestinians.

US President Donald Trump insisted on Monday that the ceasefire was still on track but also warned Hamas that it would be "eradicated" if it violated the deal.

Trump is said to have dispatched his deputy and envoys to Israel to keep up the momentum and push for the start of talks on the second critical phase of his 20-point Gaza peace plan.

It would involve setting up an interim government in the Palestinian territory, deploying an international stabilisation force, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, and disarmament of Hamas.

Vance, Witkoff and Kushner are also attempting to ensure the ceasefire deal, which is based on the first phase of the peace plan, does not collapse first.

The New York Times cited US officials as saying they were concerned that Israel's prime minister might "vacate" the deal and resume an all-out assault against Hamas.

Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament on Monday that he would discuss "security challenges" and "political opportunities" with Vance during his visit.

He also said Israeli forces had dropped 153 tonnes of bombs on Gaza in response to what he called a "blatant" breach of the ceasefire by Hamas on Sunday.

"One of our hands holds a weapon, the other hand is stretched out for peace," he said. "You make peace with the strong, not the weak. Today Israel is stronger than ever before."

The Israeli military blamed Hamas for an anti-tank missile attack on Sunday that killed two Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza and then carried out dozens of strikes across the territory which hospitals said killed at least 45 Palestinians.

Afterwards, the Israeli military said it was resuming enforcement of the ceasefire, while Hamas said it remained committed to the agreement.

However, four Palestinians were reportedly killed by Israeli fire east of Gaza City on Monday. The Israeli military said its troops fired towards " terrorists" who crossed the agreed-upon ceasefire line in the Shejaiya area.

Later, Trump told reporters at the White House: "We made a deal with Hamas that they're going to be very good. They're going to behave. They're going to be nice."

"If they're not, we're going to go and we're going to eradicate them, if we have to. They'll be eradicated, and they know that," he added.

Hamas's chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, who is in Cairo, meanwhile insisted that his group and other Palestinian factions were committed to the ceasefire deal and "determined to fully implement it until the end".

"What we heard from the mediators and the US president reassures us that the war in Gaza is over," he told Egypt's Al-Qahera News TV .

Hayya also said Hamas was serious about handing over the bodies of all the deceased hostages still in Gaza despite facing what he described as "extreme difficulty" in its efforts to recover them under rubble because of a lack of specialist equipment.

Overnight, Israeli authorities confirmed that Hamas had handed over the body of another deceased Israeli hostage to the Red Cross in Gaza.

The remains were identified as those of Tal Haimi, 41, who the Israeli military said was killed in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October, which triggered the war.

That means 13 of the 28 hostages' bodies held in Gaza when the ceasefire took effect on 10 October have so far been returned.

Twenty living Israeli hostages were also released last week in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.

There has been anger in Israel that Hamas has not yet returned all the dead hostages, with the Israeli prime minister's office saying that the group "was required to uphold its commitments".

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others as hostages.

At least 68,216 have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Jewellery stolen from the Louvre in Paris in a daring daylight robbery has been valued at 88 million euros (£76m; $102m), a French public prosecutor has said, citing the museum's curator.

Laure Beccuau told RTL radio the sum was "extraordinary" but said the greater loss was to France's historical heritage. Crown jewels and pieces gifted by two Napoleons to their wives were among the items taken.

Thieves wielding power tools took less than eight minutes to make off with the loot shortly after the world's most-visited museum opened on Sunday morning.

With the thieves having not been caught more than two days on from the heist, experts fear the jewellery will already be long gone.

• How Louvre gang carried out France's most shocking theft

Ms Beccuau said she hoped announcing the estimated worth of the jewellery would make the robbers think twice and not destroy them.

She added the thieves would not pocket the full windfall if they had "the very bad idea of melting down these jewels".

The items taken, previously described as having inestimable worth, include a diamond and emerald necklace Emperor Napoleon gave to his wife, a tiara worn by Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, and several pieces previously owned by Queen Marie-Amelie.

Investigators found a damaged crown that used to belong to Empress Eugenie on the thieves' escape route - apparently having been dropped as they departed in haste.

Four masked thieves used a truck equipped with a mechanical lift to gain access to the Galerie d'Apollon (Gallery of Apollo) via a balcony close to the River Seine.

Two of them cut through a glass window on the first floor using a battery-powered disc cutter and entered the museum. They then threatened the guards inside, who evacuated the building.

The thieves had tried to set fire to their vehicle outside but were prevented by the intervention of a member of museum staff. They were seen making off on scooters.

French President Emmanuel Macron described the robbery as an attack on France's heritage.

Security measures have been tightened around the country's cultural institutions, after a preliminary report found one in three rooms in the Louvre lacked CCTV and that its wider alarm system did not go off.

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said security protocols had "failed", lamenting that the thieves being able to drive a modified truck up to the museum had left France with a "terrible image".

Authorities believe they are chasing a team of professionals, given how quick and organised they were.

Experts in art recovery previously told the BBC investigators had just one or two days to track down the items before they could be considered gone for good.

It is most likely they have been broken down into precious metals and gems, smuggled out of the country and sold for a fraction of their worth, other experts have said.

There are "no plans" for US President Donald Trump to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a White House official has stated.

Last Thursday Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.

A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov was due to be held this week - but the White House said the two had had a "productive" call and that a meeting was no longer "necessary".

The White House did not share any more details on why the talks had been put on hold.

On Monday Trump embraced the idea of freezing the Ukrainian conflict on the current front line.

"Let it be cut the way it is," he said on Monday, referring to the contested region of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has repeatedly pushed back against freezing the current line of contact.

Moscow was only interested in "long-term, sustainable peace", Lavrov said on Tuesday, implying that freezing the front line would only amount to a temporary ceasefire.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.

The Ukrainian city of Chernihiv is in total blackout following what the authorities describe as a "massive" assault by Russian missiles and drones, with hundreds of thousands of people affected.

Across the wider Chernihiv region, four people are reported to have been killed as residential neighbourhoods were struck in the town of Novhorod-Siverskyi.

Ten others were injured, including a 10-year-old girl.

The country's most northerly region is the latest to be hit in an intensifying series of attacks on civilian infrastructure as Russia targets energy supplies, the rail network, homes and businesses in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"I personally heard the drones flying overhead," 55-year-old Oleksandr Babich said.

The Chernihiv city resident spoke in matter-of-fact terms about a night filled with the low whine of Iranian-designed Shahed drones, a sound now being increasingly heard far from the war's front lines.

"Unfortunately, our region is very close to our scheming neighbour," he said, adding an expletive for good measure.

The Chernihiv region shares a border with both Russia and Belarus, giving the air defences here less time to react to any incoming attacks.

In a raid involving more than 100 Shahed drones - each of which carry a 50kg warhead - and six ballistic missiles, the direct strikes on Chernihiv's electricity generating facilities left the whole city without power, as well as large parts of the surrounding area.

Andriy Podorvan, the deputy head of the Chernihiv Regional Military Administration, told the BBC that it was part of a pattern across much of the country, with things getting much worse in recent months.

"For around half a year we have been experiencing targeted strikes on the energy infrastructure in our region," he said.

"The number of attacks has significantly increased over the last two months."

When I asked him if he believed that any of the targets were of military value - Moscow's usual justification for these sorts of attacks - he pointed out that Russia has even been targeting petrol stations.

"I can only see strikes on civilian infrastructure," he said.

The attack on the electricity grid has also meant the loss of power to water pumping stations, seriously impacting supplies. Residents have been told to stock up on bottled water or are having to rely on emergency deliveries.

With the attacks ongoing in the morning, electrical engineers had to delay their initial response - but were later able to begin working to restore power.

The wider concern is that, if the intensity of Russia's bombardment continues, it risks rapidly depleting the country's energy resilience, taking a heavy toll on the economy and - with a harsh winter ahead - dealing a psychological blow to the public too.

Up until now, the country's generating companies - working together in a war-time spirit of co-operation - have been able to restore power relatively quickly, but stocks of replacement equipment are not unlimited.

A single transformer can take more than a year to produce, with added time for transportation and installation.

The country is having to look for all the help it can get.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's recent meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington may have been seen as a strategic disappointment, coming away without having secured a supply of long-hoped for long-range Tomahawk missiles.

But his meetings with the heads of leading US energy companies, in which they discussed ways of helping Ukraine to shore up and modernise its energy sector, were reportedly a success.

Some estimates put the total cost of the damage to Ukraine's energy infrastructure so far at more than $16bn (€13.7bn; £11.9bn).

In Chernihiv, the regional official Andriy Podorvan told the BBC that he believes Russia is unable to make any significant progress on the front lines and so now sees the civilian population as a weak point.

But he thinks this is misjudged.

"People understand who the enemy is and who is guilty in this situation," he said. "It will lead to the even greater unity of the population."

Mr Babich agrees.

"Although, yes, there are inconveniences, the majority of the population is ready for this," he insisted.

Many have been going to work as normal, he pointed out, with back-up generators in place for important facilities like hospitals and government buildings, and neighbours are helping each other.

"The hero city of Chernihiv did not give up and is not going to give up. Morale is high."

There are "no plans" for US President Donald Trump to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a White House official has stated.

Last Thursday Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.

A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov was due to be held this week - but the White House said the two had had a "productive" call and that a meeting was no longer "necessary".

The White House did not share any more details on why the talks had been put on hold.

On Monday Trump embraced the idea of freezing the Ukrainian conflict on the current front line.

"Let it be cut the way it is," he said on Monday, referring to the contested region of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has repeatedly pushed back against freezing the current line of contact.

Moscow was only interested in "long-term, sustainable peace", Lavrov said on Tuesday, implying that freezing the front line would only amount to a temporary ceasefire.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.

Under Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza, the "yellow line" - which Israel withdrew to earlier this month - is the first of three stages of Israeli military withdrawal. It leaves it in control of about 53% of the Gaza Strip.

One Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, referred to it as "effectively the new border" in Gaza.

It's a remark that will please the far-right coalition partners of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The fortifications and demarcations Israel is now building along this boundary are meant to clearly divide the territory, but they may also help to blur the differing hopes and expectations of Mr Netanyahu's allies in Washington and at home.

How long he can keep both sets of expectations in play depends largely on this next stage of negotiations.

The boundary marked by the yellow line is temporary, but further withdrawal of Israeli forces rests on resolving the difficult issues pinned to the second stage of Donald Trump's deal – including the transfer of power in Gaza and the process for disarming Hamas.

Washington is keen that nothing upset this next delicate stage of negotiations. US Vice-President JD Vance flew in on Tuesday to push Netanyahu to press on with peace talks. Trump's negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with the Israeli PM on Monday.

Israeli newspapers have been reporting that Netanyahu is receiving a stern message from his American allies to "show restraint" and not to endanger the ceasefire.

When Israel complained that Hamas had violated the terms of the ceasefire on Sunday, killing two soldiers, the response advocated by Mr Netanyahu's far-right National Security Minister was a one-word demand: "War".

Instead, Israel carried out an intense, but brief, wave of air strikes, before reinstating the truce, and was careful to emphasise that its troops had been attacked inside the yellow line – keen to show Washington that Israel had not broken the rules.

Netanyahu has said the war will not end until Hamas is dismantled – its disarmament, and the full demilitarisation of Gaza, are among the conditions he has set.

But Israeli commentators are lining up to say that the real decisions over Israel's military action in Gaza are now being made in Washington.

The yellow line – and the daunting task facing negotiators in this second stage of the deal – are clues as to why Netanyahu's coalition partners have chosen to wait, rather than carry out a threat to bring down his government.

The dream for many extremist settlers – and ministers – is that the next stage of this process will prove impossible to resolve and the yellow line will indeed become the de facto border, opening the way to new settlements on Gazan land. Some hardliners would like Israel to annex the whole of the Gaza Strip.

The vast majority of Israelis want an end to the war and for the remaining bodies of the hostages, and Israel's serving soldiers, to come home.

But Israel's prime minister is known as a politician who likes to keep his options as open as possible, for as long as possible, and this is a deal in stages, with caveats built in.

Agreeing to this first stage meant withdrawing to positions that left Israel in control of more than half of Gaza, and agreeing to a ceasefire in order to get hostages home.

From here, it will become harder to align the goals of his US and domestic allies.

Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly underlined that violations of the deal by Hamas – including its failure to disarm – would allow Israel to return to war.

"If this is achieved the easy way, so much the better," he told the Israeli public earlier this month. "If not, it will be achieved the hard way."

Donald Trump has said the same. But Washington has so far shown a tolerance for delays and violations in implementing the deal on the ground, leaving Netanyahu with far less political room than perhaps he'd like.

European leaders have joined Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky in insisting that any talks on ending the war in Ukraine should start with freezing the current front line, and warned that Russia is not serious about peace.

In a statement signed by 11 leaders including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, they said they "strongly support" US President Donald Trump's position that "the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations".

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday dismissed the idea of halting the conflict at the current contact line.

Moscow was only interested in "long-term, sustainable peace", Lavrov said, implying that freezing the front line would only amount to a temporary ceasefire.

The European statement referred to "Russia's stalling tactics", indicating how intractable Moscow's position remained.

Trump, who has often adopted a conciliatory tone towards Russia, is now planning direct talks with Putin in Budapest - although the date for a preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Lavrov seems to be slipping.

The US president spoke by phone to Putin last week, a day before meeting Zelensky and his team in the White House.

Several sources have told Western media that Trump pushed the Ukrainian leader to give up large areas of territory in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known as the Donbas, as part of a deal with Russia.

Some reports suggested there had been a "shouting match". Zelensky only described the talks as "frank".

The Ukrainian president has often ruled out withdrawing from the region, arguing that Russia could use it as a springboard for future attacks. "I explained during my visit to Washington last week that Ukraine's position has not changed," he said on Monday.

Although Russia has occupied most of Luhansk, Ukraine remains in control of about a quarter of Donetsk, including the key cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

Trump, who later denied ever insisting that Zelensky surrender the Donbas, has since embraced the idea of a ceasefire on the current frontlines.

"Let it be cut the way it is," he said on Monday, referring to the contested region.

"It's cut up right now. I think 78% of the land is already taken by Russia... I said: cut and stop at the battle line. Go home. Stop fighting, stop killing people."

But Moscow continues to dismiss talk of a front line freeze.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the idea had been put to the Russians repeatedly but that "the consistency of Russia's position doesn't change" – referring to Moscow's insistence on the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the embattled eastern regions.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated much the same lines on Tuesday.

The "root causes of the conflict" needed to be addressed, Lavrov said, using Kremlin shorthand for a series of maximalist demands that include the recognition of full Russian sovereignty over the Donbas as well as the demilitarisation of Ukraine – a non-starter for Kyiv and its European partners.

The Kremlin has played down expectations of an imminent meeting between Putin and Trump. "We cannot postpone what has not been finalised," Peskov said.

Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio were meant to meet this week to organise the summit, but no timings have yet been given.

A potential meeting between Trump and Putin in Hungary would require at least one EU country to open its air space to the Russian leader's plane.

Putin is subject to an international arrest warrant for war crimes, and Poland and Lithuania have already signalled they would execute it if he were to travel through their countries.

Another route into Budapest for Putin would be through Bulgarian airspace. Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev hinted Bulgaria would be willing to let the plane through.

"When efforts are made for peace, it is only logical that all sides contribute to making such a meeting possible," he said.

Trump and Putin last met in Alaska in August during a hastily organised summit which yielded few results apart from bringing to an end Putin's status as a pariah of the West.

For some time after the talks, Trump put forward the idea of organising a Putin-Zelensky bilateral summit.

But Russia said such a meeting was contingent on the "root causes" of the war being addressed first, and the idea was eventually quietly shelved by all parties.

Since starting his second term in office Trump has lamented that the Russian-Ukrainian war, now in its fourth year, is "difficult" to solve.

Ecuador has released the survivor of a US strike on a submarine alleged to have been smuggling drugs in the Caribbean.

US military forces captured the Ecuadorean national along with a Colombian citizen after they attacked the submarine the two were on. US President Donald Trump said they would be returned to their countries of origin "for detention and prosecution".

But the Ecuadorean Attorney General's office has said in a statement that the Ecuadorean survivor "could not be detained" because there was "no report of a crime that has been brought to the attention of this institution".

The US has conducted a series of strikes on what it describes as drug-smuggling vessels in the region.

Ecuadorean officials had earlier identified one of the survivors of Thursday's strike as Andrés Fernando Tufiño.

He and the Colombian man, who has been named as 34-year-old Jeison Obando Pérez, are the first two people to survive one of the strikes the US has been carrying out in the Caribbean as part of a massive counter-narcotics deployment.

Two other men aboard the semi-submersible were killed in the attack, according to Trump.

The US military has said that at least 32 people have been killed in at least seven separate strikes carried out since the beginning of September.

Experts have questioned the legality of the attacks, arguing they breach international law.

But the Trump administration has insisted that it was targeting "narco-terrorists".

Asked about the two survivors by reporters at the White House on Friday, Trump said that they had been aboard "a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs".

"This was not an innocent group of people," he added. "I don't know too many people who have submarines, and that was an attack on a drug-carrying, loaded submarine."

The US president alleged in a post on his Truth Social account that the vessel had been carrying "mostly fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics".

Experts on drug trafficking have pointed out that fentanyl enters the US predominantly from Mexico and not from countries bordering the southern Caribbean, where the US deployment is taking place.

Around 10,000 US troops, as well as dozens of military aircraft and ships, have been deployed to the Caribbean as part of the operation.

Trump also posted a 30-second video showing the semi-submersible in choppy waters before it was hit by at least one projectile.

The two men were rescued by a US military helicopter and then taken onto a US warship in the Caribbean, before being repatriated.

According to an unnamed official quoted by the Associated Press, the Ecuadorean survivor was in good health.

AP also reported that it had seen a document from the Ecuadorean government which outlined that "there is no evidence or indication that could lead prosecutors or judicial authorities to be certain" that Tufiño had violated any current laws in Ecuadorean territory.

The Colombian survivor arrived in his homeland "with a traumatic brain injury, sedated, medicated, and breathing with the help of a ventilator", according to Colombia's interior minister.

He is being treated in a hospital in the capital, Bogotá, local media reports.

The minister, Armando Benedetti, said that the man had been on "a vessel full of cocaine, and that in our country is a crime".

The US deployment in the Caribbean has mainly been targeting vessels leaving Venezuela, according to US officials.

Trump has accused his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, of leading a drug-trafficking group called the Cartel of the Suns.

Maduro has denied the allegations and says the aim of the operations is to topple him from power.

The Venezuelan leader, whose re-election last year has not been recognised by the US and many other nations, has appealed directly to Trump, saying he wants "peace".

But the US government has been increasing its pressure on Maduro, with Trump confirming last week that the had given to go-ahead for the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

US officials have said that previous strikes on "narco-boats" targeted the Tren de Aragua gang, which has its base in Venezuela.

But as more boats are hit, questions about the identities of those aboard have been mounting.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the US of attacking one vessel in "Colombian territorial waters" in September, saying the strike constituted "murder".

In response, Trump called Petro "an illegal drug leader" who had "strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia".

He also said that the US would no longer offer aid to Colombia and threatened to impose tariffs on Colombian goods.

Media in Trinidad and Tobago have also pressured the twin island nation's government to investigate reports that two of their nationals were killed in one of the strikes.

However, Trinidad and Tobago's government on Tuesday expressed its "strong support for the ongoing military intervention of the United States of America in the region".

"These operations aimed at combatting narco and human trafficking and other forms of transnational crime are ultimately aimed at allowing the region to be a true 'Zone of Peace' where all citizens can, in reality, live and work in a safe environment," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Additional reporting by BBC News Mundo

Attorneys for Sean "Diddy" Combs have notified a US federal court of their plans to appeal the rap mogul's conviction and 50-month prison sentence.

They filed a notice of appeal on Monday and are expected to submit the formal documents soon.

Combs was convicted of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution and acquitted on two other charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.

Judge Arun Subramanian said that a substantial sentence was needed to send a message that abuse of women "is met with real accountability".

He also issued Combs a $500,000 (£374,000) fine and five years of probation.

Combs had asked for a 14-month sentence that would have seen him released soon after the trial ended due to time spent in jail while awaiting trial, but prosecutors sought more than 11 years.

At his sentencing hearing in September, Combs told a judge: "My actions were disgusting, shameful, and sick."

"I got lost in excess, I got lost in my ego," he said.

He begged the judge for "mercy" and apologised to two of the women who testified against him.

His legal team signalled they would appeal both Combs' conviction and the judge's sentence.

Combs was arrested in September 2024 and his nearly two-month trial this summer drew international media attention.

Prosecutors accused him of using his powerful position in the music industry to run what amounted to a sex trafficking operation, and coercing his girlfriends to participate in so-called "freak-offs" with male escorts.

Much of the case centred on his relationship with the singer Cassandra Ventura, who alleged Combs physically abused her and forced her to engage in "hotel nights" with male escorts.

Another woman, who testified under the pseudonym Jane, said she felt pressured to participate in similar encounters even if she was unwell.

A jury found Combs not guilty of the two most serious charges – sex trafficking and racketeering. But they did find him guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.

For many young girls in Japan today, the image of Sanae Takaichi taking the helm of power as the country's first ever female leader is powerful and formative.

It means a patriarchal society and a political system that has long been dominated by men is now led by a woman.

But while the optics speak of a progressive moment, some women don't see her as an advocate for change.

"It was quite interesting to see how people outside Japan have reacted to the news." Ayda Ogura, 21, says.

"Everyone's like, 'wow, she's the first female prime minister in Japanese history and that would be a great opportunity for women empowerment and gender equality in Japan'.

"I think that's a very naive interpretation."

Instead, Ms Ogura points to her "political beliefs and what she stands for", adding: "She perpetuates the patriarchal system."

A big fan of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi has always wanted to be the "Iron Lady" of her country.

And like Thatcher, Takaichi is a staunch conservative.

Observers say her leadership is a tactical move from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to appeal to the more conservative base which had recently gravitated towards Japan's parties further to the right.

Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage and has long stood against legislation that would allow married couples to have separate surnames, preventing many women from keeping their maiden names.

She's also against women being in line for succession in the imperial family.

However, she did soften some of her messaging during her campaign - saying she favours giving tax incentives to companies that provide childcare facilities to their employees and spoke of possible tax breaks for families spending on childcare.

But she has over the years backed the idea of a more traditional role for women in society and in the family.

When it comes to women's issues, Takaichi is consistent with her country's less than impressive record on gender issues.

Japanese women are among the best educated and highest qualified in the world and yet they struggle with the expectations of a conservative society that still pushes them in traditional roles.

According to the 2025 gender gap index by the World Economic Forum, Japan ranked 118th among 148 countries, with female representation in the field of politics notably low.

Leadership positions have traditionally been dominated by men and Japan has struggled to increase the number of female lawmakers and business leaders.

The world's fourth largest economy ranks last among the G7 countries when it comes to the share of women in its national parliament. Specifically, women make up about 15.7% of lawmakers in Japan, the lowest figure among the G7.

It is even slow when it comes to women's reproductive health: only this week was it announced that the "morning after" pill - a form of emergency contraception available without prescription in more than 90 countries - had finally been approved for over the counter use in Japan.

Even so, some see Takaichi's rise to power as a pivotal moment that could change how women view their prospects.

"There is great significance in Ms Takaichi becoming prime minister, with a broader impact on society," Naomi Koshi - who became the country's youngest female mayor in 2012 - told Japan's Kyodo news agency.

Koshi argued Japan having a female prime minister will "lower psychological barriers" for women and girls, helping them feel it is normal to "stand out" as leaders in companies and society, even as gender-based stereotypes and expectations still remain.

But Audrey Hill-Uekawa, 20, points out that, while it is remarkable Japan has its first female leader, one must remember it took her more than 30 years to get to that position.

"She's also not really going against the grain. She's saying the same thing as the men."

Ms Hill-Uekawa adds that she shouldn't be put on a pedestal simply because she is a woman.

"We need to make sure we're talking about her policies. We need to be able to criticise her equally as everyone else."

It is not just what Takaichi has said which has led people to label her as a defender of the patriarchy.

It's also evident by who her champions inside the party have been.

She's the protégé of the late former hawkish prime minister Shinzo Abe, and was backed in the leadership election by Taro Aso - a senior figure in the LDP at the head of one of the ruling party's most influential conservative blocs.

His faction's support for Sanae Takaichi was pivotal in uniting the party's right wing behind her.

"I do feel that it is difficult for women to sort of relate to her success because it furthers this idea that we must be compliant with the status quo," 21-year-old Minori Konishi says.

Ms Ogura agrees, saying that with her as a figurehead for women in politics, "people are going to expect the same from us as well".

"They're going to expect us to be compliant, not go against the ideals that they have, and it might make our job more difficult."

Making history, however, was just the first of the challenges Takaichi will face - not least tackling a sluggish economy and inflation and winning back the trust of a frustrated and angry electorate, as well as hosting president Trump within days of taking power.

It's safe to say that no-one expects gender equality issues to be high on her priority list.

French police are desperate to retrieve priceless jewels stolen from the Louvre in a brazen daylight robbery, but experts have warned it may already be too late to save them.

In Paris on Sunday, thieves broke into the world's most-visited museum, stealing eight valued items before escaping on scooters, in a daring heist that took about eight minutes.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC he feared the jewels may already be "long gone", having been broken up into hundreds of parts.

It is highly likely the pieces will be sold for a fraction of their worth and smuggled out of France, other experts have said.

Who may be behind the heist

The group were professionals, Mr Brand believes, as demonstrated by the fact they were in and out of the Louvre so quickly.

"You know, as a normal person, you don't wake up in the morning thinking, I will become a burglar, let's start with the Louvre," he said.

"This won't be their first heist," he said. "They have done things before, other burglaries. They are confident and they thought, we might get away with this, and went for it."

In another sign the professionalism of the gang is being taken seriously, a specialist police unit with a "high success rate in cracking high-profile robberies" has been tasked with tracking them down.

Authorities have said they suspect the heist is linked to an organised crime network. Mr Brand says it means the perpetrators will likely have criminal records and be known to the police.

Organised crime groups like these generally have two objectives, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said. "Either to act for the benefit of a sponsor, or to obtain precious stones to carry out money laundering operations."

Mr Brand thinks it would be impossible to sell the items intact, and he said stealing-to-order for a private collector is something that only happens in Hollywood films.

"Nobody wants to touch a piece so hot," he explained. "You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children, you cannot sell it."

Potential £10m price tag

Mr Brand believes the objects will be dismantled and broken up, with the gold and silver melted down and the gems cut up into smaller stones that will be virtually impossible to track back to the Louvre robbery.

Jewellery historian Carol Woolton, who presents the podcast If Jewels Could Talk and was Vogue magazine's jewellery editor for 20 years, told the BBC the robbers had "cherry-picked" the most important gemstones from the Louvre's collection.

The "beautiful large flawless stones" would likely be dug out of their mountings and sold, she said, except for the crown from Empress Eugénie which has smaller stones set in it and was "too hot to handle", she added.

This could explain why it was dropped during the escape, along with one other item, and found by authorities.

Empress Eugenie's tiara, which was stolen, has rare natural pearls which have a very large value, experts say.

While the items have been described as being priceless, Ms Woolton expects them to be sold for a fraction of their worth.

"They will go to someone who is willing to handle these," she said. "Everyone will be looking for these – they will take what they can get."

How much exactly could they fetch in money if sold on? When asked about the potential value of the haul, Mr Brand said the cut-up parts could be worth "many millions".

The gems and gold stolen could fetch up to £10 million (€11.52m; $13.4m), says Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, an online jeweller.

He told the BBC the gang would need a skilled expert to remove the gems, and a professional diamond cutter to change the larger recognisable stones.

Smaller stones that were not easily identifiable could be sold immediately and while it was hard to tell the exact price of all the stones stolen, the larger ones could be worth around £500,000 each, he said.

"There are at least four of that size, so adding all of those up plus the gold, you are probably approaching £10m," he said.

"The diamond and gemstone market is liquid and there are many buyers on the fringes that don't ask too many questions."

There are hopes that the items could reappear intact one day - but those hopes are narrowing as the days pass.

There is a precedent - the Cartier exhibition at the V&A Museum features an item of jewellery stolen in 1948 before reappearing in an auction several decades later.

What is certain is many in France are deeply shocked by the Louvre heist, having felt an emotional attachment to the jewels.

"We don't necessarily like jewellery because it's a question of power, and that doesn't necessarily have a good connotation in France," Alexandre Leger, head of heritage at French jeweller Maison Vever, said.

"But inevitably, what was stolen belonged as much to you as it did to me. It belongs to France, so everyone owns a little piece of these objects, just as everyone owns a little piece of the Mona Lisa.

"It's as if someone had stolen the Mona Lisa from us... Someone stole France."

Additional reporting by Izumi Yoneyama.

South Korean police said they would seek an arrest warrant for a woman who set fire to her apartment building while trying to kill a cockroach with an improvised flamethrower, local media report.

One of the woman's neighbours died after falling to the ground in a failed attempt to escape through a window.

The woman, who is in her 20s, told police that she tried to torch a cockroach with a lighter and a flammable spray, adding she had used the method before. But on Monday, items in her home caught fire.

Police in the northern city of Osan said the woman could be charged with accidentally starting a fire and causing death by negligence.

Blasting cockroaches - with blowtorches or homemade flamethrowers - have emerged as a novel way of getting rid of house pests, made popular by videos on social media.

In 2018, an Australian man set fire to his kitchen while trying to kill cockroaches with a homemade flamethrower made from insect spray.

The woman who died in the Osan city fire, a Chinese national in her 30s, lived on the fifth floor of the building with her husband and two-month-old baby.

When they realised that a fire had broken out, the couple opened their home window and called for help.

They handed their baby through the window to a neighbour in the adjacent block, before trying to evacuate themselves.

The woman's husband managed to climb over to the next block. She tried to do the same, but fell from the window. She was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead hours later.

Police said they believed the couple had tried escaping through the window because thick smoke from the fire had blocked the stairway, local media report.

The building houses commercial shops on its first floor and 32 residential units from its second to fifth floor.

Eight other residents suffered from smoke inhalation because of the fire.

A semi-transparent crab about the size of an almond and a tiny, glowing lantern shark are among two new species discovered by Australian scientists exploring the deep sea.

In late 2022, scientists from Australia's science agency CSIRO embarked on a research voyage in the Gascoyne Marine Park, about 20km (12 miles) off the coast of Western Australia.

Australia is one of the world's biggest biodiversity hotspots, home to more than a million different species, many of which are not found anywhere else on earth.

But - like much of the globe - large swathes of its water remain unexplored, and the animal and plant life within them unknown to science.

Among the hundreds of specimens collected during the 2022 voyage was the newly described West Australian Lantern Shark. Growing up to 40cm, it has large eyes and a glowing belly, and was found more than 600m below the ocean's surface.

"Lantern sharks are bioluminescent, with light produced by photophores located on their belly and flanks, which is where their common name comes from," Dr Will White, a fish scientist, said.

They also discovered a new type of porcelain crab, about 1.5cm in length and found about 122m below sea level. They use hairs to catch food, instead of their claws.

"Porcelain crabs are known as filter feeders, feeding on plankton by using modified mouthparts with long hairs to sweep the water for small pieces of food such as plankton, rather than the typical crab method of grabbing and pinching food with their claws," said Dr Andrew Hosie, curator of aquatic zoology from the Western Australian Museum.

About 20 new species have been unearthed as a result of the voyage so far, including the Carnavon Flapjack Octopus, a rusty red creature around 4cm big.

Researchers estimate about 600 more are yet to be described and named, as it can take years for scientists to gather the information to prove they're unique.

Nicolas Sarkozy will become the first French ex-president to go to jail, as he starts a five-year sentence for conspiring to fund his election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Not since World War Two Nazi collaborationist leader Philippe Pétain was jailed for treason in 1945 has any French ex-leader gone behind bars.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007-2012, has appealed against his jail term at La Santé prison, where he is will occupy a cell roughly measuring 9 sq m (95 sq ft) in the jail's isolation wing.

More than 100 people stood outside the jail, after his son Louis, 28, called on supporters for a show of support.

Another son, Pierre, called for a message of love - "nothing else, please".

Nicolas Sarkozy, 70, was due to arrive at 10:00 (08:00 GMT) at the infamous 19th-Century prison in the Montparnasse district south of the River Seine. He continues to protest his innocence in the highly controversial Libyan money affair.

Sarkozy has said he wants no special treatment at the notorious La Santé prison, although he has been put in the isolation section for his own safety as other inmates are notorious drugs dealers or have been convicted for terror offences.

Other than Philippe Pétain, the only other former French head of state to have been jailed was King Louis XVI before his execution in January 1793.

Inside his cell he will have a toilet, shower, desk and small TV. He will be allowed one hour a day for exercise, by himself.

At the end of last week he was received at the Élysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron, who told reporters on Monday "it was normal that on a human level I should receive one of my predecessors in that context".

In a further measure of official support for the ex-president, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he would go to visit him in prison as part of his role in ensuring Sarkozy's safety and the proper functioning of the jail.

"I cannot be insensitive to a man's distress," he added.

• Read more: Former French president Sarkozy given five-year sentence after Libya case

Ahead of his arrival at La Santé prison, Sarkozy gave a series of media interviews, telling La Tribune: "I'm not afraid of prison. I'll keep my head held high, including at the prison gates."

Sarkozy has always denied doing anything wrong in a case involving allegations that his 2007 presidential campaign was funded by millions of euros in Libyan cash.

The former centre-right leader was cleared of personally receiving the money but convicted of criminal association with two close aides, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, to talk to the Libyans about secret campaign financing.

The two men both had talks with Gadaffi's intelligence chief and brother-in-law in 2005, in a meeting arranged by a Franco-Lebanese intermediary called Ziad Tiakeddine, who died in Lebanon shortly before Sarkozy's conviction.

As he lodged an appeal, Sarkozy is still considered innocent but he has been told he must go to jail in view of the "exceptional seriousness of the facts".

Sarkozy said he would take two books with him into prison, a life of Jesus and the Count of Monte Christo, the story of a man wrongly imprisoned who escapes to wreak vengeance on his prosecutors.

A man who shot and seriously injured the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in an attack last year has been sentenced to 21 years in prison after being found guilty of terrorism.

Juraj Cintula, a 72-year-old pensioner, fired five shots at the prime minister in May 2024 when he was on a visit to Handlova, about 180km (112 miles) from the capital Bratislava.

The gunman shot Fico at extremely close range, just as he was reaching out to shake his hand - thinking he was a supporter.

In court, Cintula denied trying to kill the prime minister, saying he had deliberately aimed away from his vital organs.

Footage from the scene of the shooting showed a man raising a gun and firing at the prime minister before being subdued by bodyguards. Other members of Fico's security team rushed the prime minister into his car.

He was seriously injured in his abdomen and was airlifted by helicopter to a nearby hospital for surgery, with his condition described as life threatening.

The attacker, an amateur poet in his 70s, claimed he only wanted to injure Fico in order to stop policies he believed were harming Slovakia.

The prime minister has tried to blame the opposition for the attack and for whipping up hatred, though he is known for deeply divisive rhetoric himself.

Cintula was sentenced on terror charges, with Judge Igor Kralik stating: "The court considers proven that the defendant did not attack a citizen but specifically the prime minister."

The gunman's lawyer had attempted to reduce the charge to attacking a public official, which has a lower penalty, but that was rejected by the judge.

Cintula's lawyer said he would likely appeal the verdict.

A Chinese-born woman has been charged for the theft of six gold nuggets worth about 1.5 million euros ($1.75m; £1.3m) from the Museum of Natural History in Paris last month, French prosecutors have said.

The woman was arrested in Barcelona trying to dispose of some melted gold, according to officials, and is being held in pre-trial detention.

Famous for its stuffed animals and bone collections, the museum is home to a mineralogy gallery, from the where the gold was taken. Police found an angle-grinder and a blowtorch at the scene.

The museum's alarm and surveillance systems had been disabled by a cyberattack, with thieves apparently aware of this, French media reported at the time.

• Can France retrieve its priceless crown jewels - or is it too late?
• How Louvre gang carried out France's most shocking theft

"The thieves, clearly very experienced and well-informed, exploited a security flaw that had not been identified during the last audit conducted in 2024 ," a museum spokesperson told French newspaper Le Figaro.

Cleaners discovered the break-in when they arrived for work before dawn at the museum, which is part of the Sorbonne university and located near the Jardin des Plantes in central Paris.

The suspect was arrested by Spanish police on 30 September on a European Arrest Warrant and handed over to the French on the same day, officials said in a statement.

At the time of her arrest, she was in possession of around a kilo of melted-down gold. Investigations are continuing, the statement added. It is believed she was preparing to leave for China.

One of the largest stolen nuggets, originally from Australia, weighs 5kg. At the current gold price, it would be worth around €585,000.

"We are dealing with an extremely professional team, perfectly aware of where they needed to go, and with professional equipment," Emmanuel Skoulios, the museum director, said to French broadcasters.

"It is absolutely not by chance that they went for these specific items," he told France 2 television last month.

The charges come just days after a separate daring heist at the Louvre saw thieves make off with the priceless French crown jewels.

On Sunday, "professional" thieves broke into the world's most-visited museum, stealing eight valued items before escaping on scooters. The raid took less than eight minutes, police said.

Experts told the BBC that items are likely to be broken up and sold for a fraction of their worth.

"This won't be their first heist," Dutch art detective Arthur Brand said on Monday.

"They have done things before, other burglaries. They are confident and they thought, 'we might get away with this', and went for it."

At least four French museums - including the Louvre and the natural history museum - have been robbed in recent months, according to media reports.

The small Central American nation of Belize has signed an agreement with Washington to act as a "safe third country" for migrants as they seek asylum in the United States.

Belize PM John Antonio Briceño said the deal - which must be approved by the Belize Senate - will mean that migrants deported from the US could apply for asylum instead of returning to their home countries.

The US State Department called it "an important milestone in ending illegal immigration", and "shutting down abuse" of the US asylum system.

The deal appears to be similar to one with Paraguay announced in August.

This year Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras have also taken in people deported by the US.

Human rights groups in the US and abroad have strongly criticised such deals, saying migrants face the risk of being sent to countries where they could be harmed.

Belize's ministry of foreign affairs posted on social media that the agreement "includes strict security measures to protect Belize's national security and sovereignty".

"The Agreement gives Belize full authority to approve or reject transfers, limits eligibility to specific nationalities, and ensures comprehensive background checks, among other measures," it said.

Prime Minister Briceño told local media that for Belize it will be "more like a job programme, whereby people with certain qualifications can come to Belize" and "participate meaningfully in our economy."

He added that the country - which has a population of 417,000 - would prefer to take people from Central America, adding "we're not going to open up to the whole world".

But leader of the opposition, Tracy Taegar Panton, expressed "grave concern" about the deal, saying it "could reshape Belize's immigration and asylum systems, impose new financial burdens on taxpayers, and raise serious questions about national sovereignty and security".

The US State Department posted on X that the agreement was "an important milestone in ending illegal immigration, shutting down abuse of our nation's asylum system, and reinforcing our shared commitment to tackling challenges in our hemisphere together".

Further details of the agreement have not yet been released.

Since the start of his second term, US President Donald Trump has embarked on sweeping efforts to remove undocumented migrants - a key election promise that drew mass support during his campaign.

In June, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to resume deportations of migrants to countries other than their homeland without giving them the chance to raise any risks they might face with officials.

Sanae Takaichi has been elected Japan's prime minister by parliament, making her the first woman to hold the office.

The 64-year-old won a clear majority on Monday - 237 votes in the powerful Lower House and another 125 in the Upper House - as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

A staunch conservative and admirer of the late former British PM Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi takes over at a challenging economic moment as Japan grapples with rising cost-of-living and a frustrated public.

It's also been an uncertain time for the world's fourth-largest economy. She is the fourth PM in just five years, after her predecessors' terms were cut short by plunging ratings and scandals.

Although she defeated four men to win the LDP race in early October, her path to the top job appeared to be blocked when the LDP's long-time coalition partner, the Komeito party, withdrew support.

But a last-minute deal on Monday night with another opposition party - the right- leaning Japan Innovation Party (JIP), known as Ishin - saved her. She and the LDP will face voters next in 2028.

Meanwhile aside from domestic challenges, she faces tricky relationships abroad. South Korea, which had started to mend historically delicate ties with Japan, is wary because of her right-wing politics, which lean nationalist. And, like some of her predecessors, including the late former PM Shinzo Abe, she is seen as hawkish when it comes to an increasingly powerful China.

But the most important relationship is with the US and a test is around the corner - a meeting with US President Donald Trump next week.

While both sides have reached a tariff deal, Trump's past comments questioning the value of a security treaty between them and demanding Tokyo pay more for defence have raised concerns - Takaichi must navigate these alongside an unpredictable US administration.

At the age of 64, Takaichi is no stranger to Japanese politics.

A known ally of Abe, she has held several ministerial roles over her career and has run for the PM job before.

She was elected LDP leader after former PM and LDP leader Shigeru Ishiba resigned following major losses in midterm elections.

Nicknamed the "Iron Lady" for her admiration of Thatcher, Takaichi is known for conservative views, including her opposition to same-sex marriage and a growing demand to allow married women to keep their maiden surnames.

This has made some young women sceptical of the significance of her win.

"Everyone's like, 'Wow, she's the first female prime minister in Japanese history and that's a great opportunity for women's empowerment'," said 21-year-old student Ayda Ogura.

"[But] if you look into her political beliefs and what she stands for, you realise that some of the things are very traditional. Instead of creating structural change, she rather perpetuates the patriarchal system."

During her recent campaign she proposed expanded hospital services for women's health and giving household support workers greater recognition.

She still has a major task ahead of her - to rebuild the trust of the public in the LDP.

The party has governed Japan for most of the past seven decades, but under Ishiba it lost its majority in the lower house for the first time in 15 years. Then it lost its majority in the upper house in July, amid public anger after a fundraising scandal.

In electing Takaichi, the LDP had hoped to win back conservative voters, many of whom had gravitated towards the far-right Sanseito party after being disillusioned with the usual options.

But first Takaichi has to turn her attention to public anger as prices continue to soar. An ongoing rice shortage, for example, has resulted in record prices for the Japanese staple.

Local media are reporting that she may apppoint Satsuki Katayama as finance minister, yet another historic first for a woman. Like Takaichi, Katayama too is a protege of Abe.

While concern over Japan's rising debt and lacklustre growth has been worrying investors, her win seemed to offer some optimism to the markets.

US Vice-President JD Vance has arrived in Israel as part of the Trump administration's efforts to strengthen the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

He is expected to push the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to start negotiations on long-term issues for a permanent end to the war with Hamas.

The two special US envoys who helped negotiate the deal, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, also held talks with Netanyahu on Monday.

Their visits come after a flare-up of violence on Sunday that threatened to derail the 12-day-old truce. Israel said a Hamas attack killed two soldiers, triggering Israeli air strikes which killed dozens of Palestinians.

US President Donald Trump insisted on Monday that the ceasefire was still on track but also warned Hamas that it would be "eradicated" if it violated the deal.

Trump is said to have dispatched his deputy and envoys to Israel to keep up the momentum and push for the start of talks on the second critical phase of his 20-point Gaza peace plan.

It would involve setting up an interim government in the Palestinian territory, deploying an international stabilisation force, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, and disarmament of Hamas.

Vance, Witkoff and Kushner are also attempting to ensure the ceasefire deal, which is based on the first phase of the peace plan, does not collapse first.

The New York Times cited US officials as saying they were concerned that Israel's prime minister might "vacate" the deal and resume an all-out assault against Hamas.

Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament on Monday that he would discuss "security challenges" and "political opportunities" with Vance during his visit.

He also said Israeli forces had dropped 153 tonnes of bombs on Gaza in response to what he called a "blatant" breach of the ceasefire by Hamas on Sunday.

"One of our hands holds a weapon, the other hand is stretched out for peace," he said. "You make peace with the strong, not the weak. Today Israel is stronger than ever before."

The Israeli military blamed Hamas for an anti-tank missile attack on Sunday that killed two Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza and then carried out dozens of strikes across the territory which hospitals said killed at least 45 Palestinians.

Afterwards, the Israeli military said it was resuming enforcement of the ceasefire, while Hamas said it remained committed to the agreement.

However, four Palestinians were reportedly killed by Israeli fire east of Gaza City on Monday. The Israeli military said its troops fired towards " terrorists" who crossed the agreed-upon ceasefire line in the Shejaiya area.

Later, Trump told reporters at the White House: "We made a deal with Hamas that they're going to be very good. They're going to behave. They're going to be nice."

"If they're not, we're going to go and we're going to eradicate them, if we have to. They'll be eradicated, and they know that," he added.

Hamas's chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, who is in Cairo, meanwhile insisted that his group and other Palestinian factions were committed to the ceasefire deal and "determined to fully implement it until the end".

"What we heard from the mediators and the US president reassures us that the war in Gaza is over," he told Egypt's Al-Qahera News TV .

Hayya also said Hamas was serious about handing over the bodies of all the deceased hostages still in Gaza despite facing what he described as "extreme difficulty" in its efforts to recover them under rubble because of a lack of specialist equipment.

Overnight, Israeli authorities confirmed that Hamas had handed over the body of another deceased Israeli hostage to the Red Cross in Gaza.

The remains were identified as those of Tal Haimi, 41, who the Israeli military said was killed in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October, which triggered the war.

That means 13 of the 28 hostages' bodies held in Gaza when the ceasefire took effect on 10 October have so far been returned.

Twenty living Israeli hostages were also released last week in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.

There has been anger in Israel that Hamas has not yet returned all the dead hostages, with the Israeli prime minister's office saying that the group "was required to uphold its commitments".

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others as hostages.

At least 68,216 have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

A drone attack has hit an area near the international airport in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, a day before it was set to resume domestic flights for the first time since war broke out in 2023.

Residents of the city reported hearing explosions in several districts early on Tuesday morning. Social media images - yet to be verified by the BBC - appear to show a series of blasts.

There is no information on casualties or damage, and no-one has claimed responsibility.

On Monday, Sudan's Civil Aviation Authority had announced the airport would reopen on Wednesday, months after the army recaptured Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and began repairing the heavily damaged airport.

Tuesday's strike marked the third attack in the capital within a week, following strikes on two army bases in north-west Khartoum on consecutive days last week.

The Sudan Tribune news website cites a security source as saying that anti-aircraft defences had intercepted several drones after 04:00 local time (02:00 GMT) but gave no details on any damage.

The international airport shut down shortly after fighting erupted between the army and the RSF in April 2023, when the paramilitary force took control of it.

• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening
• Sudanese city under siege: 'My son's whole body is full of shrapnel'

Port Sudan, in the east, has the country's only functioning international airport, although it has been targeted by drones.

Khartoum has remained relatively calm since the army retook control of the city in March, but attacks have persisted, with the RSF accused of targeting civilian and military infrastructure from a distance.

Since the loss of the capital, the RSF has intensified efforts to capture el-Fasher - the army's last stronghold in the western Darfur region.

The ongoing conflict has killed tens of thousands and forced millions from their homes.

What started as power struggle between the army and the RSF has since drawn in other Sudanese armed groups and foreign backers, plunging the country into what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

You may also be interested in:

• 'I can't afford to save both twins': Sudan's war left one mother with an impossible choice
• War crimes alert as food runs out in besieged Sudan city
• Oil-rich Sudanese region becomes new focus of war between army and rival forces
• 'I lost a baby and then rescued a child dodging air strikes in Sudan's civil war'

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

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

Nicolas Sarkozy will become the first French ex-president to go to jail, as he starts a five-year sentence for conspiring to fund his election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Not since World War Two Nazi collaborationist leader Philippe Pétain was jailed for treason in 1945 has any French ex-leader gone behind bars.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007-2012, has appealed against his jail term at La Santé prison, where he is will occupy a cell roughly measuring 9 sq m (95 sq ft) in the jail's isolation wing.

More than 100 people stood outside the jail, after his son Louis, 28, called on supporters for a show of support.

Another son, Pierre, called for a message of love - "nothing else, please".

Nicolas Sarkozy, 70, was due to arrive at 10:00 (08:00 GMT) at the infamous 19th-Century prison in the Montparnasse district south of the River Seine. He continues to protest his innocence in the highly controversial Libyan money affair.

Sarkozy has said he wants no special treatment at the notorious La Santé prison, although he has been put in the isolation section for his own safety as other inmates are notorious drugs dealers or have been convicted for terror offences.

Other than Philippe Pétain, the only other former French head of state to have been jailed was King Louis XVI before his execution in January 1793.

Inside his cell he will have a toilet, shower, desk and small TV. He will be allowed one hour a day for exercise, by himself.

At the end of last week he was received at the Élysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron, who told reporters on Monday "it was normal that on a human level I should receive one of my predecessors in that context".

In a further measure of official support for the ex-president, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he would go to visit him in prison as part of his role in ensuring Sarkozy's safety and the proper functioning of the jail.

"I cannot be insensitive to a man's distress," he added.

• Read more: Former French president Sarkozy given five-year sentence after Libya case

Ahead of his arrival at La Santé prison, Sarkozy gave a series of media interviews, telling La Tribune: "I'm not afraid of prison. I'll keep my head held high, including at the prison gates."

Sarkozy has always denied doing anything wrong in a case involving allegations that his 2007 presidential campaign was funded by millions of euros in Libyan cash.

The former centre-right leader was cleared of personally receiving the money but convicted of criminal association with two close aides, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, to talk to the Libyans about secret campaign financing.

The two men both had talks with Gadaffi's intelligence chief and brother-in-law in 2005, in a meeting arranged by a Franco-Lebanese intermediary called Ziad Tiakeddine, who died in Lebanon shortly before Sarkozy's conviction.

As he lodged an appeal, Sarkozy is still considered innocent but he has been told he must go to jail in view of the "exceptional seriousness of the facts".

Sarkozy said he would take two books with him into prison, a life of Jesus and the Count of Monte Christo, the story of a man wrongly imprisoned who escapes to wreak vengeance on his prosecutors.

Many of the world's largest websites, including Snapchat, Reddit and Roblox, were knocked offline on Monday after a huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage.

More than 1,000 apps and websites - including banks such as Lloyds and Halifax - were impacted by problems at the heart of the cloud computing giant's operations in the US, according to platform outage monitor Downdetector.

It said reports from users of problems globally had soared to more than 6.5 million during the outage on Monday morning.

While Amazon said it had resolved the outage by 12:00 BST, experts say it demonstrates the perils that come with lots of companies relying on a single, dominant provider.

"What this episode has highlighted is just how interdependent our infrastructure is," said Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey.

"So many online services rely upon third parties for their physical infrastructure, and this shows that problems can occur in even the largest of those third-party providers.

"Small errors, often human made, can have widespread and significant impact."

The issues appear to have begun at around 07:00 BST on Monday, as users began to report problems accessing a slew of platforms.

This included a wide range of different sites and services, from massive online games like Fortnite to the language-learning app Duolingo.

Downdetector told the BBC it had seen more than four million reports from users across 500 sites within just a few hours - more than double the amount it would see across an entire regular weekday.

These later peaked at more than six million, it said, as more services including Reddit and Lloyds Bank attempted to recover.

At around 11:00 BST, Amazon said most of its affected services had recovered.

What went wrong?

Amazon has not yet fully detailed what caused Monday's outage or issued an official statement regarding it.

It said in an update on its service status web page the issue "appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1".

DNS, which stands for Domain Name System, is often likened to a phone book for the internet.

It effectively translates the website names people use (like bbc.co.uk) into numbers which can be read and understood by computers.

This process basically underpins the way we use the internet, and disruptions to it can leave web browsers unable to locate the content they are looking for.

Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare, told the BBC the AWS outage highlighted the power cloud services have over how the internet works.

"Everyone has a bad day, today Amazon had a bad day," he said.

"There are amazing things about the cloud, it allows you to scale… but if you have an outage like this it can take down a lot of services we rely on."

And Cori Crider, head of the Future of Technology Institute, told the BBC it was "a bit like a bridge collapsing".

"An essential part of the economy has fallen to pieces," she said.

And with so much of cloud computing relying on Amazon, Microsoft and Google - estimated at around 70% - she said the status quo was "unsustainable".

"Once you have a concentrated supply in a handful of monopoly providers, when something like this falls over, it takes a huge percentage of the economy out with it," she said.

"We should really look at trying to buy more local services, rather than relying on a handful of American monopoly platforms.

"That's a risk to our security, our sovereignty and our economy and we need to look at structural separations to make our markets more resilient to these kind of shocks."

Additional reporting by Esyllt Carr.

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US chess grandmaster and online commentator Daniel Naroditsky has died aged 29.

The popular chess player's family announced his "unexpected" death in a statement released by his club, the Charlotte Chess Center, on Monday. No cause of death was given.

"It is with great sadness that we share the unexpected passing of Daniel Naroditsky," the statement said. "Daniel was a talented chess player, commentator and educator, and a cherished member of the chess community, admired and respected by fans and players around the world."

The US and International chess federations have paid tribute to Naroditsky, along with other professional players.

American world number two Hikaru Nakamura said he was "devastated" at the news.

"This is a massive loss for the world of chess," Nakamura said in a social media post.

Naroditsky first took an interest in chess at the age of six, when his older brother Alan introduced him to the game to help entertain a group of children at a birthday party.

His father Vladimir and multiple coaches soon noticed his talents.

"As far as I was concerned, I was just playing games with my brother," Naroditsky told the New York Times in a 2022 interview.

He gained international attention in 2007 when he won the under-12 boys world youth championship in Antalya, Turkey. In 2010, at the age of 14, he became one of the youngest ever published chess authors when he wrote a book titled Mastering Positional Chess, covering practical skills and technical manoeuvrings.

In 2013 Naroditsky won the US Junior Championship, helping him earn the title of grandmaster, the international chess federation's highest-ranked chess competitor, while he was still a teenager.

Naroditsky later graduated from Stanford University and worked as a chess coach in Charlotte, North Carolina.

While still competing in high-level events, he transferred his talents to the online chess universe.

Naroditsky's YouTube channel gained nearly 500,000 subscribers and his Twitch stream drummed up 340,000 followers, with hundreds of thousands of viewers drawn to his regular video tutorials and livestreams against competitors. Fans praised his insight and passion, casually referring to him as 'Danya'.

In 2022 the New York Times named Naroditsky as its "new chess columnist" and invited him to contribute to a series of chess puzzles for the newspaper's games section.

In the publication's accompanying interview, the young grandmaster mused on chess's influence in his life.

"Even at my level, I can still discover beautiful things about the game every single time I train, teach, play or am a commentator at a tournament," he said.

India's capital Delhi woke up to a toxic haze as air quality worsened after the Hindu festival of Diwali, despite a court directive to use less-polluting crackers.

People in the city and its suburbs burst crackers late into Monday night, defying the court's order to use only 'green' fireworks for a limited period of time.

Delhi, which has high pollution through the year due to factors including vehicular emissions and dust, had already seen air quality dipping over the past few days.

On Tuesday, the Air Quality Index (AQI) in Delhi was 360, according to government data. The AQI measures the level of PM 2.5 - fine particulate matter that can clog lungs and cause a host of diseases - in the air.

Levels between 101 and 200 are considered moderate, while those between 201 and 300 are "poor". Between 301 and 400 is categorised as "very poor" and a figure higher than 400 is considered "severe".

The World Health Organization's guidelines say that exposure to PM 2.5 over a 24-hour-period should be limited to 15 micrograms per cubic metre - but Delhi's AQI in some parts is 24 times higher than the recommended level.

The city's pollution problem becomes worse in winter as farmers in neighbouring states burn crop stubble. Low wind speeds also trap pollutants - such as those produced by firecrackers - in the lower atmosphere, making it hard to breathe.

That's why firecrackers had been banned in Delhi and its suburbs during Diwali since 2020. However, this rule was not strictly enforced on the ground and crackers were still available for purchase in many shops, leading to its use during the festival.

Last week, India's Supreme Court relaxed the blanket ban, allowing people to use so-called green crackers, which its makers say emit 20-30% less pollutants than traditional ones and generate minimal ash. Critics, however, have pointed out that even though comparatively less harmful, these crackers still release toxic substances into the air.

In the run-up to Diwali, BBC reporters saw traditional crackers still being sold openly in shops. And while the court had allowed green crackers to be burst only during a limited window - one hour in the morning and two in the evening on Diwali and the day before it - the sound of fireworks could be heard well past midnight in many areas.

On Tuesday, when BBC reporter Vikas Pandey left his home in Noida (a suburb of Delhi) at around 0600 local time (0030 GMT) to catch an early morning flight, he realised "the familiar smell of burning charcoal was back".

"The air was filled with smoke and visibility was poor. I could taste ash in my mouth. As the taxi entered Delhi, visibility became even poorer. The tall buildings which are usually visible at this hour had disappeared behind a thick veil of smog," he says.

Experts are worried that the relaxing of rules around crackers could affect awareness around the dangers of air pollution which was being developed over the past few years.

To be sure, Delhi's air quality was already in the "very poor" category, with AQI crossing 300, for around a week now, due to several factors such as low wind speed, vehicular emissions and stubble burning in neighbouring states.

On Sunday, officials invoked the next stage of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) in Delhi and its suburbs, imposing restrictions on the use of diesel generators and burning of coal and firewood in a bid to improve air quality.

For now, as the familiar smog descends on Delhi, its residents appear resigned.

"You can't even think of stepping outside. The situation seems to be equally bad in densely populated areas and rural areas in Delhi today," said Paras Tyagi, who lives in the capital.

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

Hamas has handed over a body that it says is a hostage, the Israeli military has said.

The body was transported by the Red Cross to Israeli forces in Gaza, and will now be returned to Israel for formal identification.

Before Monday, Hamas had handed over all 20 living hostages and 12 out of 28 deceased hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal that began on 10 October.

There has been anger in Israel that Hamas has not yet returned all the deceased hostages, with the Israeli military saying the Palestinian armed group "is required to uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the hostages".

Hamas has said it faces difficulty finding bodies under rubble in Gaza.

Under the agreement, Israel has also freed 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza, and returned 15 bodies of Palestinians in return for every Israeli hostage's remains.

The first phase has also seen an increase of aid into the Gaza Strip, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, and a halt in fighting - though deadly violence flared up on Sunday as both sides accused one another of breaching the deal.

Israel said it struck dozens of Hamas targets across the Strip after accusing Hamas of an attack that killed two of its soldiers in Rafah. Hamas had said it was "unaware" of any clashes in the area, which is under Israeli control.

At least 45 Palestinians were killed in the strikes, local hospitals said.

On Sunday evening, Israel said it was resuming enforcement of the ceasefire, adding that it would "respond firmly to any violation of it". Hamas had earlier said it remained committed to the agreement.

US President Donald Trump said the truce remained in place, as his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner travelled to Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) currently holds about half of Gaza, demarcated by a so-called Yellow Line.

With Palestinians expressing confusion about the exact location of the line, the IDF has put out a video showing bulldozers towing yellow blocks into place to mark it out.

On Monday, Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire killed three people east of Gaza City. The IDF said its troops fired towards "several terrorists" who crossed the Yellow Line in the Shejaiya area.

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

At least 68,216 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen by the UN as reliable.

Many of the world's largest websites, including Snapchat, Reddit and Roblox, were knocked offline on Monday after a huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage.

More than 1,000 apps and websites - including banks such as Lloyds and Halifax - were impacted by problems at the heart of the cloud computing giant's operations in the US, according to platform outage monitor Downdetector.

It said reports from users of problems globally had soared to more than 6.5 million during the outage on Monday morning.

While Amazon said it had resolved the outage by 12:00 BST, experts say it demonstrates the perils that come with lots of companies relying on a single, dominant provider.

"What this episode has highlighted is just how interdependent our infrastructure is," said Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey.

"So many online services rely upon third parties for their physical infrastructure, and this shows that problems can occur in even the largest of those third-party providers.

"Small errors, often human made, can have widespread and significant impact."

The issues appear to have begun at around 07:00 BST on Monday, as users began to report problems accessing a slew of platforms.

This included a wide range of different sites and services, from massive online games like Fortnite to the language-learning app Duolingo.

Downdetector told the BBC it had seen more than four million reports from users across 500 sites within just a few hours - more than double the amount it would see across an entire regular weekday.

These later peaked at more than six million, it said, as more services including Reddit and Lloyds Bank attempted to recover.

At around 11:00 BST, Amazon said most of its affected services had recovered.

What went wrong?

Amazon has not yet fully detailed what caused Monday's outage or issued an official statement regarding it.

It said in an update on its service status web page the issue "appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1".

DNS, which stands for Domain Name System, is often likened to a phone book for the internet.

It effectively translates the website names people use (like bbc.co.uk) into numbers which can be read and understood by computers.

This process basically underpins the way we use the internet, and disruptions to it can leave web browsers unable to locate the content they are looking for.

Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare, told the BBC the AWS outage highlighted the power cloud services have over how the internet works.

"Everyone has a bad day, today Amazon had a bad day," he said.

"There are amazing things about the cloud, it allows you to scale… but if you have an outage like this it can take down a lot of services we rely on."

And Cori Crider, head of the Future of Technology Institute, told the BBC it was "a bit like a bridge collapsing".

"An essential part of the economy has fallen to pieces," she said.

And with so much of cloud computing relying on Amazon, Microsoft and Google - estimated at around 70% - she said the status quo was "unsustainable".

"Once you have a concentrated supply in a handful of monopoly providers, when something like this falls over, it takes a huge percentage of the economy out with it," she said.

"We should really look at trying to buy more local services, rather than relying on a handful of American monopoly platforms.

"That's a risk to our security, our sovereignty and our economy and we need to look at structural separations to make our markets more resilient to these kind of shocks."

Additional reporting by Esyllt Carr.

Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.