A man has died near Athens as a storm hits parts of Greece with gale-force winds and flooding, while a Saharan dust storm enveloped the island of Crete.

The man was found under a car in the Nea Makri rural area early on Thursday, according to the fire department.

Storm Erminio has flooded streets, closed some schools and moored ferries. Meanwhile, some flights were disrupted on Crete on Wednesday after dust from an African storm filled the air, turning the sky red-orange.

The weather is expected to be bad on Thursday in most areas of the country "with long-lasting and intense rains and storms and possibly with local hail", according to the national meteorological service.

A red warning is in place in Crete, mainly in the west and south, from midday until late at night on Thursday.

The fire department received 674 calls for assistance from Wednesday through the early hours of Thursday. The majority were in the Attica region that encompasses Athens, with most calls for fallen trees.

High winds have kept ferries moored in ports, with Greek media reporting some departures may resume on Thursday, weather permitting.

Streets as well as the basement of the local police station in Nea Makri were flooded. A bridge was knocked down on the island of Poros and vehicles have reportedly been swept away. Some schools have also been closed.

Courts in Brazil will be able to determine shared custody arrangements for the pets of separating couples, under new laws.

Lawmakers in the Brazilian Congress on Tuesday viewed the law change as a reflection on the importance people place on their pets.

The legislation means that if a couple separates without reaching an agreement regarding their pet, "a judge will determine the shared custody arrangement and the equitable distribution of the animal's maintenance expenses between the parties".

Currently, the country of 213 million people has about 160 million pets, according to the Instituto Pet Brasil.

For the law to apply to separating couples, the animal must have spent the majority of its life with the pair.

Shared custody will not be granted in cases of prior criminal records or a history or risk of domestic violence.

Members of the congress said there had been an increase in pet custody disputes in courts, while noting the law responds to "changes that have occurred in Brazilian society in recent decades," according to a statement accompanying the law.

The statement added that couples with fewer children tend to have closer relationships with their animals, "often considered true family members".

Currently in the UK, dogs are legally seen as inanimate objects akin to cars, houses or other personal items, meaning custody cases come down to determining who the sole owner is.

In 2014, France changed its law so pets were considered "living and feeling beings" rather than "moveable goods". That change meant couples would be able to fight for shared custody in divorce cases.

Australia currently has no legislation on how the courts should navigate living arrangements for pets after a breakup.

The most recent example of a pet being given joint custody was in Spain in 2021. A judge granted joint custody of a dog to a separated couple who went to court to determine who the pet should live with.

The Madrid court considered that both parties were "jointly responsible" and "co-caretakers" of Panda the dog.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is poised to become one of the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.

The company, which manufactures rockets, space exploration technology and Starlink satellites, is currently privately held. But on Wednesday it made a confidential filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering, which would allow shares to be traded in the stock market.

The value of SpaceX once it goes public is expected to surpass $1tn (£751bn). That would make its eventual stock market debut one of the most financially significant in history.

Musk's own holding in SpaceX would put the billionaire on track to become the world's first trillionaire.

The BBC has contacted SpaceX for comment.

The company is aiming to officially go public sometime in June, according to reports in Bloomberg, Reuters and the New York Times.

A confidential IPO filing with the SEC allows a company to avoid immediately revealing information to the public while it requests feedback from the regulator. The next step will be for company executives to hold "roadshows" - meetings with big investors to convince them to buy shares.

By making shares of SpaceX available for purchase by the public, the company is looking to raise $50bn or more, according to the reports.

Earlier this year, SpaceX took over xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence venture. After that all-stock merger, SpaceX is believed to have become the most valuable private company in the world, with an internal valuation of $1.25tn.

Recently, Musk's various companies have been becoming increasingly intertwined.

Last year, xAI, best known for its chatbot Grok, took over X, the social media platform previously called Twitter that Musk bought in 2022.

This degree of consolidation was a clear sign to investors that SpaceX was preparing to go public.

Emily Zheng, a senior analyst at Pitchbook, earlier told the BBC that by bringing xAI under SpaceX, Musk could show potential investors that he was consolidating costs and able to easily share resources between his companies.

With its large-scale ambitions, SpaceX is in need of a massive cash infusion that going public can provide, Zheng added. The company is racing to keep up with the "sheer cost of compute, infrastructure, and energy" needed to expand, she said.

Earlier this year, Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company, revealed it had invested more than $2bn in xAI.

The billionaire said a significant share of Tesla's manufacturing would begin to shift toward building robots, which would make use of xAI technology like Grok.

Grok is already included in some Teslas as an AI assistant.

SpaceX would also partner with Tesla and xAI in the massive chipmaking endeavour Musk announced last month, which he is calling Terafab.

"Tesla, xAI and SpaceX have all done amazing things that people did not think could be done before," Musk said in a March presentation discussing Terafab.

Musk started SpaceX in 2002 with the aim of reducing the cost of launching crafts into space, mainly by making rockets that could be launched more than once. It first contracted with Nasa in 2006.

Today, most of SpaceX's work continues to revolve around rockets and the operation of Starlink, a fleet of satellites offering internet connectivity across the globe.

But Musk often discusses grander ambitions for the company, including putting data centers needed for AI in space and building a self-sufficient city on Mars, which many experts have said could be impossible to realise.

Tech giant Palantir has pushed back against concerns that military use of its AI platforms could lead to unforeseen risks, in an exclusive interview with the BBC, insisting that the way the technology is used is the responsibility of its military customers.

It comes as experts have expressed concern over the use of Palantir's AI-powered defence platform - Maven Smart System - during wartime and its reported use in US attacks on Iran.

Analysts have warned that the military's use of the platform, which helps personnel plan attacks, leaves little time for "meaningful verification" of its output and could lead to incorrect targets being hit.

But the company's UK and Europe head, Louis Mosley, told the BBC in a wide-ranging interview that while AI platforms like Maven have been "instrumental" to the US management of the Iran war, responsibility for how their output is used must always remain "with the military organisation".

"There's always a human in the loop, so there is always a human that makes the ultimate decision. That's the current set-up."

The Maven Smart System was launched by the Pentagon in 2017 and is designed to speed up military targeting decisions by bringing together masses of data, including a range of intelligence, satellite and drone images.

The system analyses this data and can then provide recommendations for targeting. It can also suggest the level of force to use based on the availability of personnel and military hardware, such as aircraft.

But scrutiny has grown over the use of such tools in warfare. In February, the Pentagon announced that it would be phasing out Anthropic's Claude AI system - which helps to power Maven - after the company refused to allow use of its AI in autonomous weapons and surveillance. Palantir says alternatives can replace it.

Since the war with Iran began in February, the US has reportedly used Maven to plan strikes across the country.

Pushed by the BBC on the risk that Maven might suggest incorrect targets - which could include civilians - Mosley insisted that the platform is only meant to serve as a guide to speed up the decision-making process for military personnel and that it should not be seen as an automated targeting system.

"You could think of it as a support tool," Mosley said. "It's allowing them to synthesise vast amounts of information that previously they would have had to do manually one by one."

However, Mosley deferred to individual militaries when challenged by the BBC on the risk of time-pressured commanders ordering their officers to take Maven's output as being rubber-stamped.

"That's really a question for our military customers. They're the ones that decide the policy framework that determines who gets to make what decision," he said. "That's not our role."

Since 28 February, the US has launched more than 11,000 strikes against Iran, many reportedly identified by Maven.

Adm Brad Cooper, head of the US military in the Middle East, has hailed AI systems for helping officers "sift through vast amounts of data in seconds, so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react".

But some worry AI's involvement in mission planning creates significant risks.

"This prioritisation of speed and scale and the use of force then leaves very little time for meaningful verification of targets to make sure that they don't include civilian targets accidentally," Prof Elke Schwarz of Queen Mary University of London said.

"If there's a risk of killing and you co-opt a lot of your critical thinking to software that will take care of these things for you, then you just become reliant on the software," she added. "It's a race to the bottom."

In recent weeks, Pentagon officials have faced questions as to whether AI tools such as Maven were used to identify targets in the deadly strike on a school in the Iranian town of Minab. Iranian officials said the strike killed 168 people, including around 110 children, on the opening day of the war.

In Congress, a number of senior Democrats have called for increased scrutiny of AI platforms like Maven. Rep Sara Jacobs - a member of the House Armed Services Committee - called for clearly enforced rules and regulations about how and when AI systems are used.

"AI tools aren't 100% reliable — they can fail in subtle ways and yet operators continue to over-trust them," she told NBC News last month.

"We have a responsibility to enforce strict guardrails on the military's use of AI and guarantee a human is in the loop in every decision to use lethal force, because the cost of getting it wrong could be devastating for civilians and the service members carrying out these missions."

But Mosley pushed back against suggestions that the speed of his company's platform is rushing decision making at the Pentagon and potentially creating dangerous situations. He instead argued that the speed at which commanders are now taking action is a "consequence of the increased efficiency" that Maven has enabled.

Citing "operational security", the Pentagon declined to comment when approached by the BBC on how AI systems like Maven will be used in future or who would be held responsible should something go wrong.

But officials in the US appear to be moving forward with plans to further integrate Maven into its systems.

Last week, the Reuters news agency reported that the Pentagon had designated Maven as "an official program of record" - establishing it as a technology to be integrated long-term across the US military.

In a letter obtained by Reuters, deputy Defence Secretary Steve Feinberg said the platform would provide commanders "with the latest tools necessary to detect, deter, and dominate our adversaries in all domains".

Additional reporting by Jemimah Herd

More than 1,800 civilians have been killed in Burkina Faso since Ibrahim Traoré seized power three years ago in acts amounting to "war crimes and crimes against humanity", a new report says.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says about 1,837 civilians, including dozens of children, were killed in 57 incidents between January 2023 and August 2025.

It attributes most of the killings - 1,255 - to the military and allied militias, with the rest blamed on Islamist militants.

HRW finds President Traoré and six senior military commanders "may be liable as a matter of command responsibility for grave abuses and should be investigated". It also says five jihadist leaders may be culpable.

The Burkinabé authorities have not yet commented on the report but have dismissed previous accusations that their forces have killed civilians.

One of the reasons the military gave for seizing power was to tackle the jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda who have been waging an insurgency in Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries for over a decade and control huge parts of the country.

The report is based on analysis of open-source information, including photos, videos and satellite imagery, and interviews with witnesses and survivors.

"All sides are responsible for the war crimes of willful killing, attacks on civilians and civilian objects, pillage and looting, and forced displacement," the report says.

It accuses the junta of committing "horrific abuses" and failing to hold perpetrators to account while blocking reporting to hide the suffering of civilians caught in the violence.

"The scale of atrocities taking place in Burkina Faso is mind-boggling, as is the lack of global attention to this crisis," says Philippe Bolopion, HRW's executive director.

The report cites one of the deadliest incidents in December 2023 in which it says the military and allied militias killed more than 400 civilians in the northern town of Djibo.

A 35-year-old woman told the rights group that her two daughters died on the spot and bullets injured her and her nine-month-old son.

"Make sure no-one is breathing before heading out," she recounted a militia member as saying.

Survivors described the killings as brutal and said they continue to suffer deep psychological trauma.

"Many survivors described the killings as 'butchery' and said they were left with deep psychological wounds," the report notes.

Since the military government seized power, authorities have been accused of carrying out brutal campaigns increasingly targeting civilians in response to attacks by al-Qaeda affiliate JNIM, the biggest jihadist group in the country.

Civilians described to HRW a feeling of being "caught between a rock and a hard place", threatened with death by JNIM while also being targeted by government forces.

The rights group says JNIM has used widespread threats and violence to dominate and punish communities and has targeted civilians refusing to submit to its authority, whom it accuses of supporting the government.

In August 2024, JNIM attackers "shot dead at least 133 people and injured more than 200 in fewer than two hours", it says.

HRW is now urging the International Criminal Court to open a preliminary investigation into the alleged crimes committed by all the parties since September 2022.

It has also called on Burkina Faso's partners and donors to impose sanctions and to refrain from cooperating with the country's army.

Traoré seized power in September 2022 after overthrowing Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had taken over only nine months earlier.

Despite his authoritarian reputation, 37-year-old Traoré has gained a huge following across the continent for his pan-Africanist vision and criticism of Western influence.

Burkina Faso, like its neighbours Mali and Niger which are also under military rule, has moved away from working with Western countries, especially France, in its fight against the Islamist groups. All three have instead turned towards Russia for military assistance, however the violence has continued unabated.

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The Australian government has announced long-awaited gambling advertising reforms, after years of public pressure.

The suite of measures will further limit when and where gambling ads can appear, as well as who can star in them - but it stops short of a full ban, which had cross-party support and the backing of a range of community groups.

Restrictions have been fiercely opposed by powerful gambling agencies, as well as media firms and sports organisations who feared a steep revenue hit.

Australians lose more money to gambling, per capita, than anywhere else in the world.

A number of countries - like Italy, Belgium and Spain - have introduced total or near-total bans on gambling advertising, and a parliamentary inquiry weighing up reform in Australia recommended similar more than 1000 days ago.

In a speech to the National Press Club on Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government was "getting the balance right" with this package.

"Letting adults have a punt if they want to, but making sure our children don't see betting ads everywhere they look."

Under the reforms, from January 1:

• TV ads from betting agencies will be capped at three per hour, between 6am and 8:30pm, and banned completely from any live sports broadcasts during those hours
• Gambling ads will be banned from radio during school pick-up and drop-off times
• Celebrities and sports players will not be permitted to appear in gambling advertising
• Gambling ads on online platforms will be banned, unless people have a logged in account, are over 18 and have the option to opt-out
• Gambling ads will be outlawed in sports venues and on players' and officials' uniforms

The government will also crack down on illegal, offshore gaming sites, and ban more types of online gambling - like Keno and apps and websites modelled on poker machines.

The measures have already prompted backlash from voices in the gambling industry.

In a statement, Responsible Wagering Australia - the peak body for betting agencies - said the new measures are "draconian" and set a "dangerous precedent".

"Today it's gambling advertising, tomorrow it's alcohol, then it's sugary drinks, fast food, critical minerals and who knows what else comes next," chief executive Kai Cantwell said.

He accused the government of blindsiding a sector that supports 30,000 jobs and "provides critical funding to sport, racing and broadcast industries".

A spokesperson from Sportsbet - one of Australia's biggest agencies - said they were concerned the "overly blunt" restrictions could have "unintended consequences", like driving more Australians towards illegal offshore betting which isn't limited by the same conditions.

"Sportsbet recognises changing community sentiment on gambling advertising and has already taken proactive steps."

Many of those advocating for change were also unhappy, believing the proposed changes don't go far enough.

"Imagine three cigarette ads per hour," Reverend Tim Costello said.

"Australian children deserve to grow up in a country that puts their wellbeing before corporate profits."

His Alliance for Gambling Reform were among groups calling for a full gambling advertising ban on the web and broadcast platforms, and the establishment of a national industry regulator.

Similarly, Australian Medical Association vice-president Julian Rait in a statement declared that "partial bans do not work".

"Anything less than a comprehensive ban will continue to expose Australians - especially children - to relentless gambling promotion," he said in a statement.

The alleged Bondi gunman has lost his court bid to suppress the names and addresses of his mother, brother and sister due to fears over their safety.

Lawyers for Naveed Akram - who is facing 59 charges over December's attack on a Jewish festival on Bondi Beach that killed 15 people - argued that his family could be targeted by vigilantes and had already experienced abuse.

Last month, details of Akram's family were suppressed under an interim order but on Thursday, a Sydney court lifted it after several media outlets opposed the move.

The case had attracted "unprecedented" attention in Australia and globally, the judge ruled, and information about the family was already widely available online.

"This case has unprecedented public interest, outrage, anger and grief," Judge Hugh Donnelly told the court.

He said the request for a suppression order lasting 40 years did not meet the exceptional circumstances threshold and would have limited impact as it would only apply in Australia and not social media platforms or international media outlets.

The judge said the case was "exceptional by virtue of the sheer magnitude and intensity of the commentary" on overseas platforms, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Donnelly said it was "unfortunate" that Akram's driver's licence had already been posted online but that his lawyers had not properly explained how an order could be enforced.

He also said he was not critical of an interview that Akram's mother gave to a local outlet but that suppressing her identity would do little, the ABC reported.

On the names and workplaces of Akram's siblings, the court said they were unlikely to be part of any court proceedings as they had "little relevance to the case".

Akram, 24, appeared in court via video link from the high security prison where he is being held.

During a hearing last month, the court heard that people had driven past Akram's family home, shouting abuse and death threats.

Family members also reported receiving threatening texts and phone calls.

"We live in constant fear someone will harm us or set our house on fire. I fear for my life and the lives of my children," Akram's mother wrote in a statement.

Lawyers for the media organisations who opposed the suppression order argued that the details of his family were already widely known and there was no evidence of an imminent risk to them, according to the Guardian Australia.

Nasa's Artemis II mission thundered away from Florida's coast, taking its four crew members on their historic journey to circle the Moon.

There was a deep rumbling as a sheet of brilliant white flame suddenly erupted, momentarily engulfing the whole launch pad as the mightiest rocket Nasa has ever built rose into the sky.

Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS) majestically crept upwards - slow at first, then gathering pace, riding on two blinding pillars of flame that crackled and roared with increasing volume until the rumbling was almost deafening, a sound we could feel in our bodies as we watched on in amazement, three miles (4.8km) away from the launch pad.

There were small cheers from those in the know as the rocket past the moment of maximum danger - one minute and 10 seconds into the launch. This is where the pressure hits the rocket the hardest, and when engineers know that even a small structural weakness can be disastrous.

There was no weakness, and SLS arced out over the Atlantic like a fiery white angel, leaving a white smoky trail as the sound subsided and the spacecraft disappeared from view, shrinking to a single bright star as it chased the Moon.

Afterwards, there was a giddy euphoria among staff at the Kennedy Space Center.

One person told me they felt quite emotional and another said they wanted to cry – no doubt a release of tension built up over the past few months when Artemis II came close to launch, but ended up being scrubbed for various reasons.

Tonight, though, Nasa employees were laughing and clapping - this is the moment that they have spent years working towards. There is still work to do, but for now they are bathing in the moment of triumph.

• Everything you need to know about the Artemis II mission
• First stop, the Moon. Next stop, Mars? Why Nasa's mission matters
• Inside the Moon mission to fly humans further than ever

In the hour before take-off there were issues which threatened the launch.

They concerned the launch abort system, which enables Nasa engineers to eject the astronauts and blow up the rocket if there is a malfunction.

The countdown clock was held at 10 minutes while engineers resolved the problem. They worked quickly, but it was an agonising wait to see if the launch could still go ahead.

Then came the staccato rhythm of the calls by each engineer responsible for the rocket's critical systems: "booster, go", "GNC, go", "range, go" – each reply, a tiny release of tension and a build-up of expectation.

"Artemis II, this is launch director," said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the first woman to hold the position at Nasa.

"You are go for launch," she told the crew. "We go for all humanity", Commander Reid Wiseman responded.

Cheesy words in normal circumstances, but that was the moment our spines began to tingle and we knew we were about to witness history.

The Kennedy Space Center was built to send astronauts to the Moon, but that hasn't happened since 1972 when Apollo 17 blasted off. Today, the centre was back in business, doing what it was made for.

The press corps headed outside, where clouds that had threatened to cancel the launch had evaporated.

As the countdown clock restarted, the atmosphere turned to electric anticipation.

The four RS 25 engines and twin solid rocket boosters lit up, driving more than 8.8 million pounds of thrust into the Florida evening sky.

"God Speed Artemis II" Blackwell-Thompson said in another echo from the past. The same words were used in a launch from here in 1962 to send John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, on his way.

I have been lucky enough to see launches of the Space Shuttle to the International Space Station from the Kennedy Space Center. Those launches are almost as impressive in flight, surging into space with an enormous bang and rising at the speed of a bullet.

But the SLS launch was not only more beautiful, it meant much more: a moment full of emotion for all those who saw it, perhaps because it reminded us of what humanity can do when it comes together, or perhaps because we may be entering a new era of space travel.

In the 1990s, I had the opportunity to speak to Neil Armstrong, who, in 1969, became the first person to ever walk on the moon.

Our discussion came at a time when the dream of human space travel seemed to be over. I asked him whatever happened to that dream? He smiled and said "the reality may have faded but the dream is still there and it will come back in time".

Today was the day the dream returned.

Two walkers find themselves stranded on a remote hillside as night closes in, hundreds of miles from home, after being inspired out into the wilderness by a TikTok video. It might sound like an unusual emergency - but for Mike Park, CEO of Mountain Rescue England and Wales, it's become a familiar story.

"We had two people stuck on a hill at 8pm, no torches. One was in their early 20s and the other was late 30s. It was their first time on a hill. They'd travelled a long way because they'd seen a TikTok route. They set off on their walk at 2pm - too late - wearing shorts, T‑shirts and carrying only a picnic," he recalls.

"They got off‑route, found themselves in unfamiliar ground – but they did the right thing by calling for help."

Park says this recent rescue, just a few days ago in the Lake District, is typical of the kind of callouts many colleagues now see.

His rescue team were able to safely find the pair and walk them off the hill – but the incident perfectly captures some changing behaviours. Their situation was self-inflicted; they weren't prepared and got into trouble, extra layers and some good torches could have seen them rescue themselves - but they were also quick to call for help when they knew something was wrong - a decision Park says saved them from far more severe consequences.

"If we hadn't reached them, they'd have been stuck all night in the dark. By morning, I'm confident they'd be suffering hypothermia - possibly unable to walk."

Over the past few years, mountain rescue teams say there's been a stark rise in the number of people needing to be rescued.

This has ignited a delicate but important debate. Who is responsible for safety on our mountains? And, are increased warning signs and even barriers the answer to saving lives in our most dangerous landscapes, or is risk the price we pay for true adventure?

The rise in callouts

Mountain rescue callouts have been steadily rising for decades. Sport England figures suggest there's been a particular boom in recent years, with the number of us regularly climbing a hill or mountain rising from 2.8m people in 2018 to 3.6m in 2024.

Living an active lifestyle is something the public body estimates could be saving the NHS billions each year, by reducing the number of people developing chronic conditions.

However, it's also contributed to sharp rises in the number of rescues required by the volunteers who make up the UK's so-called "fourth emergency service".

In England and Wales, the number of callouts rescue teams attend has doubled in the past decade, reaching well over 3,000 a year by 2024, according to Mountain Rescue England and Wales.

So what's changed?

One of the key themes rescue teams pick up on is how incidents featuring younger adventurers, aged 18 to 24, have soared in recent years. Callouts for the age group almost doubled in England and Wales between 2019 and 2024, from 166 to 314.

It now makes them the most rescued age group, overtaking walkers in their 50s who had previously needed the most help.

Mike Park has spent the past 40 years on the hills of the Lake District, rescuing those in danger. He has observed a significant shift among younger people in embracing the outdoors - but says he believes better technology and wider social changes in the past few decades have also fed into the overall rise.

"It doesn't matter what age you are - society is more adventurous, more reliant on help, less outdoor‑aware, and less prepared," he says.

"When I first started our team did 10-15 callouts a year. We average around 100 now. The rise hasn't been steady - it's steepened sharply, especially in the last 10 years and after Covid-19."

Park believes part of what makes the mountains of the UK so attractive is that most can be easily accessed for a day-trip - at worst a short weekend break. They are on our doorstep, via the same motorways and service stations we might stop at on our way to a theme park or music gig.

This can breed a sense of overfamiliarity - with some misjudging just how alien and dangerous these environments can be, he suggests.

Park says decades ago, many people who went into the UK's mountains would have it as their sole major pastime, they were "hillwalkers or mountaineers, that was it". Now, outdoor adventures are easy to pick up alongside the many other work and leisure activities people juggle.

"There's so much to do now, we don't concentrate on any one thing. People might do the outdoor environment one week, swimming the next, holiday the week after," he says.

Rescuers say it should be seen as only good news that millions of people are now inspired each year to venture into the outdoors themselves, encouraged by stories of the physical and mental health benefits - and beautiful images spread across social media.

But the reality of having so many novices is also starting to take its toll on some of the UK's busiest rescue teams, who are increasingly grappling with exhaustion and stretched staffing.

It's important to note that no rescue team we spoke to begrudge doing these kinds of rescues - they are grateful they can help those who need it and avoid the situation getting any worse. It doesn't matter how you got there, just that they can help you get down safely.

But according to Park, the fact people are seemingly more willing to take risks in the first place - and then more willing to pick up the phone when things go wrong - has fundamentally changed what kind of rescues his teams do.

"Ten years ago, 70% of callouts were because someone physically couldn't get off a hill," he says.

"Now, most people haven't physically injured themselves - it's that they're mentally unable to get down, because they weren't prepared for the environment."

In other words, people's bodies are capable of getting them off the mountains, but they lack the experience, confidence or equipment to do it safely.

Online influencers

Many mountain rescuers believe the increase in online influencers is playing a role. There are pictures and videos across sites like TikTok and Instagram encouraging people to venture out to beautiful plateaus and waterfalls.

Seeing people influenced by social media "used to be rare, but now it's constant," explains Martin McMullan, from the Mourne Mountain Rescue Team in Northern Ireland.

"People search out iconic locations made popular by influencers. Some go just to experience it - others are trying to create their own content for their platforms."

In some rare cases, McMullan says influencers may even be attempting to get rescued - to create more interesting content for their channels. He became suspicious of one case a few years ago, when his team was called to Northern Ireland's highest peak in "very serious" sub-zero winter conditions.

At the summit McMullan says they found a group of young people who they escorted part of the way down, before calling in a helicopter to evacuate them to safety. It was only days later, when a friend alerted him to it, that McMullan realised the whole thing had been filmed by the group, clutching onto their phones as they were rescued.

"They'd been livestreaming parts of it - even when things became dangerous. We were oblivious to it at the time. They probably thought it made great social media content."

McMullen says although being far from the first time he'd had a rescue filmed by members of the public keen to capture the drama of the job, it was the first time his team suspected a group had gone out with the idea of getting rescued, something they denied.

Hotspots

The vast majority of mountain rescue teams, thankfully, rarely find themselves called out to a death. But the spread is far from even and there are certainly hotspots.

The rescue team covering Yr Wydffa, Snowdon, is far and away the busiest in the UK. The team is often called to fatal incidents and has seen a rise in deaths. Across north Wales, there were 14 fatalities in the mountains back in 2015. Last year there were 23.

So-called body recovery callouts can have a significant impact on the rescuers, with a growing importance being placed on welfare checks and support for the teams who regularly battle the elements to retrieve bodies so they can be returned to their loved ones.

There have been suggestions that putting up physical warning signs, or even fencing, on some of the UK's most dangerous ridges and waterfalls could potentially save lives. The National Trust and conservation project, Fix the Fells, recently decided signs were needed to prevent accidents on England's highest mountain, Scafell Pike.

Over eight years, four people died and more than 40 were rescued from the treacherous ravine known as Piers Gill, before a sign and large rocks were placed on the nearby route to encourage people away from the area.

In mid-Wales, one assistant coroner has recommended multiple times that signs be put up around some of the region's impressive waterfalls. Five people have died at the beauty spots in the past few years, which has prompted the assistant coroner for south Wales central, Rachel Knight, to write three Prevention of Future Death Reports - recommending improvements.

In the most recent one, she argued clearer warning signs were needed for walkers who risked falling from the paths above the waterfalls – suggesting without them, many would fail to understand "the significant risks they face" in the area and more people were likely to die.

So could putting up signs work in other remote areas?

Andy Buchan is due to take over Mike Park's role at Mountain Rescue England and Wales in May.

In some of the most extreme areas, like Crib Goch, a notorious knife edge ridge in north Wales with annual fatalities, Buchan says some ideas should be considered.

"I won't call it signposting in terms of actually putting signs up on the mountain, but certainly signposting towards more information could really help."

Buchan suggests that in rescue hotspots such as Crib Goch, which does already have some warnings placed on the route, more could be done to help walkers access weather forecasts and safety information before they get to an area - potentially by placing additional signs or QR codes in car parks hikers are likely to use before heading out.

However, what Buchan and others I speak to really don't want to see - despite some potential benefits - is the same widespread canvassing of signs and fencing witnessed in other countries.

"There are other parts of the world that I've travelled, like the US, where you can get to remote places and then all of a sudden, when you want to go and have a look at the view over the cliff, there's a big metal barrier around and there's concrete being put in place and it kind of destroys the remoteness of the location that you're in," Buchan explains.

'The mountain isn't going anywhere'

In preparing for the role, Buchan has had plenty of time to think about the current challenges, but is overwhelmingly positive about seeing more people out on the hills.

"We encourage people to get outside for their physical and mental wellbeing," he says. "People recognise the countryside is a cost‑effective way to have great experiences. It's great - but it does come with risk."

The story of Jack Carne is testament to that. Jack and his two best friends had travelled a few hours from their hometown of Barnsley to reach the mountains of Eryri, also known as Snowdonia, in north Wales. Inspired, after the Covid-19 lockdowns, by the freedom the mountains offered them, the trio in their 20s had been out hiking at every possible opportunity. They were committed, fit and experienced - but on this occasion, just "10 metres from the top" of Glyder Fawr, a peak thousands of feet up, everything went wrong.

A rock Jack had grabbed hold of broke away in his hands. His friends could do nothing as they watched him fall. In just an instant he was gone - disappearing out of sight beneath them. Three friends went up the mountain that day. Only two came back.

It was the starkest reminder possible about the unpredictability and the dangers lurking just beneath the surface of the UK's most picturesque landscapes – even for those who come prepared.

At the inquest into Jack's death, the coroner remarked how the young men were all well-equipped and experienced enough for the route they'd chosen.

"It was a scramble - nothing harder than anything we'd done before," Matty Belcher, one of those three friends, told me. "In fact it was easier than a lot of stuff we'd done," added the 27-year-old.

"Mountain Rescue said the boulder that actually took Jack was a freak accident," adds Brandan Smith, 25, the group's third member.

"That rock could have gone in a week's time, a year's time."

One week after Jack's death, Brandan and Matty were back at the same peak - this time making it the additional 10m to the summit, where they had time to reflect alongside Jack's dad, who they'd brought with them.

"Jack's dad wanted to see it - put his mind at ease, instead of guessing what happened," explains Matty.

For Brandan and Matty, it was a key moment - that inspired them to keep adventuring and not give up on the beauty of our landscape, despite the risks.

"Jack was the one who absolutely loved it the most out of us," says Brandan. "He was probably the best of us at climbing - he was brilliant - he always pushed me, believed I could do it even when I didn't.

"If we'd stopped going out after he died, Jack would've kicked us for it."

The key thing, both men say, is for those looking to adventure, to always be aware of the risks.

"For us, if someone isn't feeling safe, we turn back. No question. There's always another day," says Brandan. "It's always going to be there - the mountain isn't going anywhere."

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. Emma Barnett and John Simpson bring their pick of the most thought-provoking deep reads and analysis, every Saturday. Sign up for the newsletter here

At least four people have been killed by a series of powerful explosions at an ammunitions depot in Burundi's largest city, Bujumbura, local residents have told the BBC.

The blasts erupted late on Tuesday at the facility, located in the suburb of Musaga, due to an electrical fault, an army spokesperson said.

Shrapnel and debris were propelled more than 5km (three miles) and several houses in nearby districts were destroyed by the force of the explosions.

The authorities have not yet provided any casualty figures but family members and eyewitnesses told the BBC of four separate deaths in the city. The AFP news agency quotes security sources as saying that dozens of people had died.

One woman told BBC Gahuza that a relative, who had been detained at Mpimba Central Prison, had died after a bomb hit the facility.

Numerous inmates at the prison, which is located near the ammunitions store, are reported to have been injured.

In the north-eastern neighbourhood of Gisandema, witnesses told BBC Gahuza that a bomb had destroyed a house and killed a domestic worker.

The authorities have said they cannot yet comment on the number of casualties as they are still assessing the extent of the damage.

The explosions sent plumes of smoke rising above the city, sparking panic in the city of more than a million people.

President Evariste Ndayishimiye, in a message on X, expressed his condolences to all Burundians, adding that the authorities are "here to help".

More BBC stories about Burundi:

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

President Donald Trump's address from the White House on Wednesday evening was - despite some speculation beforehand - largely a rehash of what he has been saying for days about the Iran war.

In a 20-minute primetime speech, he said the "core strategic objectives" of the US-Israeli military operation were "nearing completion" after a month of war and projected it would last another two to three weeks.

There were the usual threats against Iran, too, including a repeated pledge to bomb the country "back to the stone age".

If you were to copy and paste his posts on Truth Social over the last week or so, you would not be far off this address to the nation.

The president did attempt to persuade Americans of the merits of this war. There is good reason for that, as polls suggest a consistent majority of voters disapprove of the military operation he launched on 28 February.

Trump urged Americans to see this war as an "investment" in their future, and suggested it was nothing compared to other conflicts over the past century or more in which the US has ended up being involved for far longer.

But there was little here for those hoping for clear answers on where this war is heading or potential exit ramps for the US. There were glaring omissions which leave a plethora of questions unanswered.

Firstly, Israel is still attacking Iran and taking incoming drone and missile attacks – including earlier on Wednesday in Tel Aviv just hours before the beginning of Passover.

A key question is whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government agrees with the timetable of a few more weeks that was provided by Trump. We simply do not know at this point in time.

Secondly, what happened to the 15-point peace plan the White House was urging Iran to accept just days ago? There was no mention of it by Trump on Wednesday night. Is Washington now ditching many of those demands, including the retrieval of its stockpile of enriched uranium?

That, too, is unclear.

The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's busiest oil shipping channels which has been effectively closed off by Iran, is a central issue in this conflict.

The president, however, does not appear to have a settled view on it.

One moment he is demanding Iran allow tankers through, and the next he is telling allies to go and sort it out for themselves. "Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves," he said on Wednesday. "The hard part is done, so it should be easy."

He then simply said, without expanding further, that the strait would reopen "naturally" when the war was over. That is unlikely to reassure those concerned about oil prices.

Trump's pointed criticism of some allies - he said at one point that they should "build up some delayed courage" and lead an operation to reopen the strait - came after he floated the idea of pulling out of the Nato military alliance in an interview earlier on Wednesday.

But that rhetoric was completely absent from this speech, despite briefings suggesting it would be a key part of his words tonight.

Another key unanswered question relates to ground troops. What are the thousands of marines and paratroopers actually going to be doing in the region as they continue to arrive?

The truth is that after this national address, we are really none the wiser about what the president sees as victory in this war.

And given the often conflicting nature of his statements from one day to the next, everything could change at any time.

Meanwhile, the average price of gas in the US has topped $4 for the first time in nearly four years and the president's approval ratings are cratering, just months before the crucial midterm elections which will determine control of Congress.

This is a US president looking for a way out of this war – and he is still casting about to find one.

A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck in the Molucca Sea off Indonesia's Ternate island early Thursday, killing at least one person.

The quake, which struck at 06:48 local time (22:48 GMT) at a depth of 35km, sparked tsunami warnings which have since been withdrawn.

A 70-year-old woman in North Sulawesi died after being crushed by building debris, and another person broke their leg after jumping off a building, Indonesia's national news agency Antara reported.

While the region experiences high levels of seismic activity, some residents told the BBC this was one of the strongest earthquakes they have felt in at least the past six years.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially warned that tsunami waves less than 0.3m (1 ft) "were possible" along the coasts of Guam, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Taiwan. The tsunami alert was lifted after two hours.

Journalist Isvara Safitri, who lives in central Manado, recalled how furniture in her room shook for several seconds.

"It was really strong... My head even felt dizzy," Safitri told BBC Indonesian.

Even the roads outside the house were shaking, she said, adding that the earthquake "feels like the strongest" she's experienced over the past six years.

Yayuk Oktiani, who lives in Bitung, a city on the north-eastern coast of Sulawesi, said she often experiences tremors, "but they're never as strong as this one".

Oktiani was at the market when "everything started shaking". Several stores experienced power outages and as the tremors got stronger, people fled, she told the BBC.

She headed straight for her child's school, which is located "very close" to the sea.

"The situation there was chaotic... The teachers immediately told parents to bring their children home, even though they had only just arrived," she told the BBC.

In Ternate, resident Budi Nurgianto said the walls in his house vibrated for what felt like more than a minute. He rushed outside, into a scene of panic.

"There were many people outside... I even saw some people leaving their house without having finished their shower," he told AFP news agency.

Manado and Bitung are located on the island of Sulawesi, while Ternate is a volcanic island in the North Maluku province.

The epicentre of the quake was roughly midway between Manado and Ternate.

At least two aftershocks, with magnitudes 5.5 and 5.2, followed the major quake, with authorities warning of more to come.

The national geological agency reported "damage to buildings and injuries" about an hour after the initial tremor, but did not provide further detail.

Footage from a search and rescue team in Manado shows residents and officials walking through the rubble at a sports complex, with some shouting "oh my God".

Large pieces of furniture were flung onto the ground, with some metallic structures bent out of shape.

A patient at Siloam Hospital in Manado recalled the frantic efforts to evacuate staff and patients.

"We were sitting there drinking tea... [Initially we] didn't realise it was an earthquake. And then we heard a child scream, 'Come down, hurry up,' " said Admini, 69.

Nurses and doctors quickly set up makeshift treatment areas, out in the open and inside vehicles.

"Everyone was huddled together outside," Admini said. "Some were in wheelchairs, others were helping each other."

Additional reporting by Heyder Affan in Jakarta

The Supreme Court appeared sceptical of President Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship, a sign the high court could strike down a key element of his immigration agenda.

A majority of the court's justices on Wednesday seemed unconvinced that the US should stop granting citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary US visitors.

The administration has argued that its effort to limit birthright citizenship is necessary to help rein in illegal immigration. Opponents argue it would upend more than a century of precedent and unravel a cornerstone of US immigration law enshrined by the 14th Amendment.

Trump attended the oral arguments in person on Wednesday, a rare move by a sitting president that underscored the high stakes of the case.

A defeat for Trump would mark a second straight setback at the high court, following the decision last month that invalidated the president's global tariffs. A win would help Trump deliver on his pledge to reshape America's immigration policies.

During more than two hours of arguments, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer sought to convince the justices that the 14th Amendment - which establishes the concept of birthright citizenship and was extended formerly to enslaved people - and subsequent court rulings and laws passed by Congress all mistakenly expanded birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a key swing vote on the court, questioned Trump's authority to exclude the children of undocumented immigrants from receiving US citizenship.

"I'm not quite sure how you can get to that big group," Roberts said.

• Trump says he will attend birthright citizenship arguments at Supreme Court
• Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. Where do other countries stand?

The oral arguments turned on a key clause in the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the US who are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Bauer argued that the clause should only apply to the children of foreign diplomats and a few other limited groups. Parents who are in the country illegally when their children are born have "allegiance" to their home countries and therefore don't fall under the jurisdiction of US law, he said.

"Jurisdiction means allegiance," Sauer said. Citing a previous court opinion, he later argued that "permanent residence and domicile decides [citizenship]. That's what the court should be bound by."

But several justices said that interpretation would fundamentally reshape how Americans and people living around the world understand the US birthright citizenship process.

Justice Elena Kagan said the administration was seeking to undo a legal tradition of birthright citizenship that dates back to English common law. "What the 14th Amendment did was accept that tradition and not attempt to put any limitations on it. That was the clear rationale," Kagan said.

Several justices also pointed to the 1898 Supreme Court ruling, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the landmark decision that upheld birthright citizenship in the case of a child born to Chinese immigrants living in the US.

Cecillia Wang, an ACLU attorney representing the plaintiffs in court on Wednesday, used the decision to argue that Trump's executive order should be overturned.

"If we agree with you how to read Wong Kim Ark, then you win," Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. "That could be just a short opinion."

Whether the court ultimately issues a broad or narrow opinion remains to be seen. The difference between a sweeping ruling on constitutional grounds versus a more tailored opinion on statutory grounds is a critical one, legal experts said.

The justices could choose to focus on a 1952 law passed by Congress that codified birthright citizenship and not wade into the larger constitutional debate, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert.

"The court does not like to rule on constitutional issues if it doesn't have to," Yale-Loehr said. "The court could argue that the Trump executive order is invalid on statutory grounds."

The court is expected to issue its decision in June. It would be the first major immigration case decided by the court on its merits since Trump started his second term. The court has taken up other immigration cases, but has so far sent them back to lower courts for further review.

Trump's push to end birthright citizenship is one part of his larger immigration crackdown. But it's nevertheless a longtime goal of many on the right, and something Trump has supported since his first term in office. A victory in this case would help Trump make the case that he is delivering on his campaign pledge to limit illegal immigration.

A loss would be a setback to Trump's immigration agenda. But it would also represent a larger blow to his efforts to aggressively expand executive power since returning to office. The ruling in February overturning Trump's sweeping global tariffs showed the justices are not willing to give Trump a blank check to bypass Congress and the courts.

Trump signaled his interest in the case by attending the oral arguments on Wednesday. Critics said his appearance was an improper effort to influence the court ahead of a decision that will have major repercussions for his domestic policy agenda.

"We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow 'Birthright' Citizenship!" Trump said incorrectly on social media after leaving the court.

President Donald Trump has told the nation in a televised speech that the US military has nearly completed its goals in the Iran war.

He vowed to strike Iran "extremely hard" over the next two to three weeks and finish the job "very fast", without setting any timeline for ending the conflict.

In his primetime address, Trump called for countries that receive oil through the Strait of Hormuz to show "courage" and seize the key waterway, which has been effectively closed by Iranian attacks since the conflict began.

The president is grappling with rocketing gas prices and sliding personal popularity ratings as the war continues into its fifth week and US midterm elections loom in November.

Wednesday night's speech did little immediately to reassure global oil markets that disruption to the Strait of Hormuz shipping route will ease anytime soon.

The price of benchmark Brent crude was trading at about $100 a barrel before the president started speaking. Afterwards it rose to $105.

In the 20-minute speech from the White House, Trump said the US was "nearing completion" of its "core strategic objectives" in the conflict, and had "decimated" Iran's navy drone and ballistic missile forces.

"Very shortly, we are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks," Trump said.

However, he provided little insight into the state of what he described as "ongoing" discussions with Iran's leadership, leaving open the possibility of hitting Iranian energy infrastructure if negotiations prove fruitless.

"If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard, and probably simultaneously," the US president said.

"We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding."

Earlier in the day, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Iran had asked for a ceasefire - a claim that Iran's foreign ministry quickly described as "false and baseless".

In his speech on Wednesday night, as he has done several times in recent days, Trump called on US allies to do more to secure shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.

He urged them to "build up some delayed courage".

"Go to the Strait and just take it," he added.

Trump made no specific mention of the future of the Nato alliance, after earlier telling the British newspaper the Telegraph that he'd reconsider the US role in what he described as a "paper tiger".

His address to the nation came shortly after it emerged that Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, who is known as "the Trump whisperer" because of his influence with the president, is planning to visit the White House next week.

The president's political opponents were quick to criticise his speech. New York Democrat and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described the address as "rambling, disjointed and pathetic".

"Donald Trump's actions in Iran will be considered one of the greatest policy blunders in the history of our country, failing to articulate objectives, alienating allies, and ignoring the kitchen table problems Americans are facing," Schumer wrote on X. "He is completely unfit to be Commander-in-Chief and the whole world knows it."

According to an update by US Central Command on Wednesday, American forces have struck more than 12,300 targets across Iran since Operation Epic Fury began, including Iranian naval vessels and facilities, missile launchers and defence manufacturing plants.

But despite his claims of victory, Iranian attacks across the region continued on Wednesday, with authorities in both the United Arab Emirates and Qatar responding to missile and drone strikes.

In separate incidents, British troops said they brought down 10 Iranian drones in countries including Jordan, Bahrain and Cyprus.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week suggested that two-thirds of Americans believe the US should end the war quickly, even if it means not achieving Trump's goals. In the survey, 60% of respondents disapproved of the military strikes on Iran, while 35% approved.

Officials in Utah have formally closed a 51-year-old cold case after using new DNA technology to identify a murdered teenager as a victim of serial killer Ted Bundy.

Laura Ann Aime, 17, disappeared after leaving a party on Halloween in 1974. Her body was discovered about one month later by hikers in the American Fork Canyon.

On Wednesday, the Utah County Sheriff's Office announced that new testing "confirmed irrefutably that DNA evidence recovered from Laura's body verified the existence of DNA belonging to Bundy".

Between February 1974 and February 1978 Bundy murdered at least 30 women. He has also been linked to many more killings throughout the country.

Before he was executed in Florida in 1989, Bundy confessed to Laura's killing, but since he would not elaborate or give any detail to his actual involvement in her death, "the Sheriff's Department elected to keep this case open until investigators could prove, without a shadow of doubt", that he was her killer, the sheriff said in a statement.

"This case is now officially closed," Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith declared during a news conference, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

The sheriff added that if Bundy were still alive, prosecutors would pursue the death penalty against him.

Bundy is among America's most infamous serial killers, and began his spree by attacking victims throughout the Pacific Northwest of the US. He later killed victims in Colorado, Utah and Florida.

At the time of Laura's death, he was living in Salt Lake City and studying law at the University of Utah.

The sheriff's statement said Laura is remembered as an "outgoing free spirit who enjoyed outdoor activities and shared a passion for riding horses, hunting, and caring for her several siblings".

Bundy was known to often approach women in public places, gain their trust with his charm or a fake injury, and then lure them to secluded areas and kill them.

He was first arrested in 1975 for kidnapping a woman and sentenced to 15 years in jail.

But in 1977 he escaped by jumping out of a prison library window.

He was recaptured for eight days and then escaped again, continuing to kill until he was finally caught in 1978.

The Supreme Court appeared sceptical of President Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship, a sign the high court could strike down a key element of his immigration agenda.

A majority of the court's justices on Wednesday seemed unconvinced that the US should stop granting citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary US visitors.

The administration has argued that its effort to limit birthright citizenship is necessary to help rein in illegal immigration. Opponents argue it would upend more than a century of precedent and unravel a cornerstone of US immigration law enshrined by the 14th Amendment.

Trump attended the oral arguments in person on Wednesday, a rare move by a sitting president that underscored the high stakes of the case.

A defeat for Trump would mark a second straight setback at the high court, following the decision last month that invalidated the president's global tariffs. A win would help Trump deliver on his pledge to reshape America's immigration policies.

During more than two hours of arguments, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer sought to convince the justices that the 14th Amendment - which establishes the concept of birthright citizenship and was extended formerly to enslaved people - and subsequent court rulings and laws passed by Congress all mistakenly expanded birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a key swing vote on the court, questioned Trump's authority to exclude the children of undocumented immigrants from receiving US citizenship.

"I'm not quite sure how you can get to that big group," Roberts said.

• Trump says he will attend birthright citizenship arguments at Supreme Court
• Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. Where do other countries stand?

The oral arguments turned on a key clause in the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the US who are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Bauer argued that the clause should only apply to the children of foreign diplomats and a few other limited groups. Parents who are in the country illegally when their children are born have "allegiance" to their home countries and therefore don't fall under the jurisdiction of US law, he said.

"Jurisdiction means allegiance," Sauer said. Citing a previous court opinion, he later argued that "permanent residence and domicile decides [citizenship]. That's what the court should be bound by."

But several justices said that interpretation would fundamentally reshape how Americans and people living around the world understand the US birthright citizenship process.

Justice Elena Kagan said the administration was seeking to undo a legal tradition of birthright citizenship that dates back to English common law. "What the 14th Amendment did was accept that tradition and not attempt to put any limitations on it. That was the clear rationale," Kagan said.

Several justices also pointed to the 1898 Supreme Court ruling, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the landmark decision that upheld birthright citizenship in the case of a child born to Chinese immigrants living in the US.

Cecillia Wang, an ACLU attorney representing the plaintiffs in court on Wednesday, used the decision to argue that Trump's executive order should be overturned.

"If we agree with you how to read Wong Kim Ark, then you win," Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. "That could be just a short opinion."

Whether the court ultimately issues a broad or narrow opinion remains to be seen. The difference between a sweeping ruling on constitutional grounds versus a more tailored opinion on statutory grounds is a critical one, legal experts said.

The justices could choose to focus on a 1952 law passed by Congress that codified birthright citizenship and not wade into the larger constitutional debate, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert.

"The court does not like to rule on constitutional issues if it doesn't have to," Yale-Loehr said. "The court could argue that the Trump executive order is invalid on statutory grounds."

The court is expected to issue its decision in June. It would be the first major immigration case decided by the court on its merits since Trump started his second term. The court has taken up other immigration cases, but has so far sent them back to lower courts for further review.

Trump's push to end birthright citizenship is one part of his larger immigration crackdown. But it's nevertheless a longtime goal of many on the right, and something Trump has supported since his first term in office. A victory in this case would help Trump make the case that he is delivering on his campaign pledge to limit illegal immigration.

A loss would be a setback to Trump's immigration agenda. But it would also represent a larger blow to his efforts to aggressively expand executive power since returning to office. The ruling in February overturning Trump's sweeping global tariffs showed the justices are not willing to give Trump a blank check to bypass Congress and the courts.

Trump signaled his interest in the case by attending the oral arguments on Wednesday. Critics said his appearance was an improper effort to influence the court ahead of a decision that will have major repercussions for his domestic policy agenda.

"We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow 'Birthright' Citizenship!" Trump said incorrectly on social media after leaving the court.

Of all the warnings in President Trump's arsenal, quitting the Nato military alliance is among those he's wielded the most.

Now he's doing it again.

Asked by Britain's Telegraph newspaper if he is reconsidering US membership of Nato, he said: "Oh yes… I would say [it's] beyond reconsideration" – fuming again that his partners weren't joining America's military operations, alongside Israel, against Iran.

"I just think it should be automatic," he emphasised in his remarks to the paper.

Trump's invective underlines again his misunderstanding of how this 32-member alliance works.

Nato's Article 5 does commit it to collective defence. An attack against one member is deemed to be an attack against all but invoking this principle requires a consensus. And the 1949 treaty only referred to crises in Europe and North America.

One ally after another has held back from joining a war they weren't consulted on, given they still don't understand its goals in the face of mixed messaging from the Trump administration.

Article 5 has only been triggered once, in the wake of the September 11th attacks on the US in 2001.

Trump also referenced Ukraine in the Telegraph, saying: "We've been there automatically, including Ukraine."

After Russia's audacious full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the then-US President Joe Biden did take a leading role in shaping the response of individual Western governments because he believed President Putin's actions threatened them all.

Nato, as an alliance, provided assistance but avoided the dangerous prospect of becoming directly involved as a party to this conflict.

Even before Trump entered the White House in 2017, he repeatedly dismissed Nato as a "paper tiger," described it as "obsolete", and said that it was "costing a fortune" for the US.

This year, he's mocked the alliance, saying Russia would have occupied all of Ukraine if the US had not been Nato's enforcer.

Trump almost walked out in early 2019, during his first term in office.

"We saw clear signs that Trump was preparing to act on his threat," the former Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrote in his recent memoir, On my Watch.

Stoltenberg recounted how he went on Fox News and credited Trump with pressuring Nato allies to increase their military spending.

In his telling, Trump immediately acknowledged that praise on social media and then didn't make the speech the White House had reportedly drafted for a US pullout.

At the centre of Trump's concerns was the 2014 agreement that countries should spend 2% of their GDP on defence; at the time, it was only described as a "guideline".

Military spending has ramped up significantly by almost all Nato members, partly in response to Trump's threats, partly because of Russia's growing menace.

This new crisis will again strengthen the resolve of European countries and Canada to bolster their own defences and depend on themselves for their own security. But there's still that cold hard fact that the might of the US military matters - immensely.

The US's contribution now makes up some 62% of Nato's budget and the Pentagon has assets and intelligence capabilities others still can't match.

This time, his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who calls himself a former supporter of the alliance, has also chimed in.

"I think there's no doubt, unfortunately, after this conflict is concluded we are going to have to re-examine that relationship," he told Fox News.

Referring to US bases in Europe he said not using them "to defend America's interests" meant "Nato is a one-way street."

Britain initially refused access to US warplanes but later changed tack, saying bases could be used for "defensive operations." That delay continues to be derided by Trump and his secretary of defence, the self-styled Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. They've repeatedly taunted Prime Minister Starmer as being "no Churchill" – a reference to Britain's leader during the Second World War.

On Tuesday, Italy denied US aircraft permission to land as they were en route to the Middle East for combat operations. Spain has closed its airspace to US planes conducting missions against Iran.

Rubio added it was "ultimately" up to the President to decide this issue.

But it's not his alone.

The US Congress voted at the end of 2023 to prohibit the president from unilaterally withdrawing from Nato without the approval of a two-thirds Senate majority or an act of Congress.

Nato leaders, and most of all its current secretary general Mark Rutte, will need to spend time again trying to convince and cajole Trump that it's in his interest, and America's, to stay.

Rutte, like Stoltenberg, is called the "Trump whisperer" for his efforts in public, and private, to keep the unpredictable president on side. Rutte, the former Dutch leader armed with his toolbox of praise, is widely seen as having played a significant role in pulling Trump back from the brink in his threats to "take" Greenland – a semi-autonomous territory of fellow Nato member Denmark - earlier this year.

But Rutte has also come under fire from other Nato states for going too far with his staunch support for a war against Iran he said Trump was doing "to make the whole world safe."

But his top priority is keeping his 77-year-old coalition intact as it confronts growing threats in Ukraine, the Middle East – and the White House.

Relatives of the 57 people who died in Greece's worst ever train disaster crowded into a courtroom on Wednesday, demanding justice for the victims.

The trial had already been postponed once because of the chaotic start last week.

Most of the victims of the crash three years ago were students, killed when their intercity service from Athens to Thessaloniki smashed head-on into a goods train on the same line near Tempi in the centre of the country.

Some of the victims are thought to have burnt to death after surviving the initial collision.

Many relatives were unable to get into the courtroom in the central town of Larisa last week, and the situation was little different when it resumed on Wednesday.

Police officers allowed in only participants who were legally scheduled to attend.

Some relatives complained that two rows of seats had been taken up by police, while others said they still could not witness proceedings clearly enough.

Defence lawyer Zoe Konstantopoulou appealed for the proceedings to be filmed as access for families had been restricted.

The February 2023 disaster is widely known in Greece as the "Tempi crime" - with many arguing it encapsulates negligence and corruption at the heart of the state.

Thirty-six people are on trial in a case that is expected to hear from 350 witnesses and set to last years.

Among those killed was 20-year-old Anastasia Plakias, a student at the University of Thessaloniki.

She, like so many other victims, was travelling back to lectures in the northern city after spending a public holiday with her family.

In the weeks after the crash, her grieving father Dimitris told the BBC he would always be proud of his daughter who "only had love to give".

He said: "We relatives call it a state assassination of our children, and all the people who were aboard that train… in which European country could this be possible?"

Anastasia had been travelling with her 20-year-old twin cousins, Thomi and Chrysa, who were also killed.

Thirty-three of the defendants face up to life in prison if convicted.

Among those in the dock is a station master who failed - along with everyone else - to spot that the two trains had been travelling towards each other on the same line for 10 minutes.

Other railway officials are also on trial along with two Italian former employees of the trains' parent company, Ferrovie dello Stato.

The Tempi disaster provoked widespread anger and protest across Greece.

The railway network had not made use of EU funding intended to improve safety. The head of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, Laura Kovesi, later said the collision could have been avoided if the money had been spent on modernising the signalling system in time.

Trade unions in Greece had warned that some sort of catastrophe on the railway network was waiting to happen.

To the amazement of some, the crash site was bulldozed within days, which experts say destroyed potentially crucial evidence.

This fuelled claims of a cover-up, which authorities have denied.

Despite the public outcry, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was re-elected soon after the disaster and has survived two related no-confidence votes in parliament.

Mitsotakis apologised to the families of the victims in the days after the crash and has asked repeatedly for public patience so that justice can take its course.

To the frustration of many campaigners, no politician is among those on trial.

The case is taking place in a remodelled conference hall that cost hundreds of thousands of euros and Mitsotakis has said it is "among the most functional and modern in Europe".

More than 60,000 pages on evidence is to be presented and 200 lawyers are involved in the case, but proceedings descended into chaos on 23 March when the courtroom became overcrowded.

Survivors of the disaster and family members of the deceased were forced to sit in the seats of the accused, most of whom were absent.

Lawyers argued health and safety regulations were being violated.

Maria Karystianou, who lost her 19-year-old daughter Marthi, said relatives had been "packed like sardines" and the spectacle was "an absolute disgrace".

Across the world on Wednesday night, millions of people will tune in to watch Donald Trump deliver a primetime update on the war in Iran. Many will hope for some insight on how the war ends and what might come after.

The Trump administration has, so far, given little clue as to what prompted the hastily-arranged remarks, or whether they will mark the beginning of the end of the conflict or a potentially bloody escalation.

This ambiguity is, at least partly, by design. Trump often changes course or leaves his thinking a mystery to all but a small inner circle of supporters, which he has acknowledged leaves friend and foe alike wondering about his next move.

The president also knows that the address comes at a critical time in his presidency and amid mounting domestic pressure to find a way out of the conflict.

Poll after poll has shown that Americans have little appetite for a protracted conflict in Iran, particularly if it involves the prospect of US soldiers on Iranian soil.

A Reuters poll released this week, for example, found that two-third of Americans believe the US should work to swiftly wrap up its involvement in the war, even if the administration's stated military objections are not fully accomplished.

Closer to home, many Americans are increasingly wary of higher prices at the petrol pump, which this week crossed the average of $4 a gallon for the first time in years.

For a president who, pre-war, often pointed to lower petrol prices as a mark of success, this trend represents a challenge.

Imran Bayoumi, a geostrategy expert with the Atlantic Council in Washington DC and former policy adviser to the defence department, told the BBC that the "deep domestic unpopularity" of the war, along with the economic fall-out, "both pose a problem ahead of midterm elections" if the war were to drag on.

The US president will also likely present his view on how the conflict - or at least US involvement in it - will come to a close.

This has shifted repeatedly, from initial calls for an "unconditional" Iranian surrender to a potential negotiated agreement. Just yesterday, he abruptly shifted course, saying that the war could end in "two to three" weeks even without any deal.

This morning, he again seemed to shift, posting on Truth Social that Iran's "much less radicalised" president had asked the US for a ceasefire, but that the US would not consider it until the Strait of Hormuz is open.

Until then, Trump promised, the US will be "blasting Iran into oblivion, or as they say, back to the Stone Ages".

According to Bayoumi, what constitutes victory for Trump is "loosely defined", which provides the president with some flexibility.

"Not having clearly defined goals going into the conflict allows Trump to declare victory at any time," he said. "[He] has mentioned that he's halted the nuclear threat from Iran, but it's not clear he actually has."

While on a tactical level the US-Israeli operation has been successful in severely degrading Iran's military, Trump's assertion that the war is winding down soon leaves a very narrow window for more complex military options, such as seizing control of Iran's highly-enriched uranium or opening the Strait.

On the latter point, we are likely to hear the president dismiss the Nato alliance as one that he believes has proven itself unwilling to help advance US interests.

What he says tonight will be carefully scrutinised by US allies and adversaries, some of whom will wonder whether it constitutes a ruse.

In Tehran, the country's remaining leadership will remember that Trump had publicly endorsed negotiations he said were ongoing and positive nearly until the moment US bombers struck Iranian nuclear facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer.

"Now or never," Peter Magyar has been telling Hungarians, in a breathless campaign across the country in the run-up to 12 April elections that opinion polls suggest he can win.

This 45-year-old former Fidesz party insider represents the biggest threat to Viktor Orban's rule in Hungary since he won the first of four consecutive victories in 2010.

Magyar's slogan dates back to a revolutionary poet's 19th Century rallying cry to rise up for the homeland.

After more than 100 campaign stops his message has been shortened to "Now": the words "or never" have been crossed out, adding to the urgency.

He is on course to visit all of Hungary's 106 constituencies, and he has given four, five, even six speeches a day. Magyar has built a powerful support base in more than two years of touring the country, even in the small towns and villages were Fidesz traditionally dominates.

Last year he walked 300km (185 miles) from Budapest to the Romanian border in a campaign to "reunite" the nation, in a bid to bring natural Fidesz voters to his side.

Magyar promises to tackle corruption, improve the economy and he has sought to woo Hungary's disadvantaged Roma community. He has also promised to unlock billions of euros in EU funds, frozen largely because of concerns over Hungary's rule of law.

But Orban has depicted him as a "puppet" of the EU and Ukraine, and he has been wary of getting too close to Brussels and has promised voters "we are the real party of peace".

His self-confidence stems from a deep understanding of the rival he faces.

Until February 2024, Magyar was very much part of the Fidesz family.

He joined the party at university and married one of its rising stars in Judit Varga, with whom he had three children.

Then Magyar stunned Hungarians with a live appearance on a pro-opposition YouTube Channel called Partizán.

In a country of 9.6 million people, a million watched as a solemn Peter Magyar explained why he had had enough of his own party.

"Everyone warned me against it, friends, family people I know," he told presenter Márton Gulyás. "Obviously I've been in this system, in this circle, for a very long time."

Hungary was in the midst of a scandal in which President Katalin Novak had granted a pardon to a man who had helped cover up sexual abuse in a Hungarian state-run children's home.

She resigned, and so did Magyar's ex-wife. Varga had been justice minister and had co-signed the pardon. Two leading Fidesz women were left to carry the can. Varga had been destined for big things in Fidesz, having left her job as minister to spearhead Fidesz European election campaign. That career was over.

Now she was no longer part of the Fidesz machine, Peter Magyar sensed this was his moment.

"I do not want to be part of a system in which the real people in charge hide behind women's skirts," he wrote on Facebook.

Towards the end of his Partizán interview Magyar spoke of his hope for political change, while realising it would be very difficult while Orban was still in power.

The current opposition was totally inept, he complained, so change would have to come from within. But one day there would be change and when it did happen it could be fast, he predicted.

His YouTube appearance went viral.

"It was not a planned move," he later told the BBC. "My mother called me not to go, but I did the opposite. Everybody knew the situation in Hungary - it's not very safe to go against this government."

Peter Magyar's high-profile party marriage had fallen apart in 2023 but he was still an important figure in Fidesz even if he was little known to the wider public.

He was a natural fit for Orban's social conservatives.

The son of two lawyers - his mother was as senior judge - Peter Magyar also counts a former Hungarian president as his godfather, and he was very interested in politics from an early age.

Magyar went to an elite Catholic boys' high school near the centre of Budapest before studying law at a Catholic university in Budapest while Orban was serving his first term as prime minister from 1998-2002.

Magyar joined the party after Orban's election defeat, and the woman he married, Judit Varga, was destined for Fidesz success, becoming justice minister in 2019, nine years after Orban's return to office.

Magyar himself became a diplomat at Hungary's permanent mission in Brussels, later running Orban's team working with the European Parliament. He went on to serve on the boards of state-owned companies.

His disaffection with the party was gradual.

"After a while I became more and more critical, openly and just among friends. I can tell you that the Fidesz we see today is very very different from the one I joined in 2002."

"I was always told by the politicians it's necessary to keep power - I accepted it for a time. But of course the turning point was in 2024," he told the BBC's Budapest correspondent Nick Thorpe.

For a while, Magyar worried if he had made a mistake: "I have three kids, I love them very much and I was very much worried about their future as well."

If the YouTube interview was the turning point, the next big moment came on 15 March 2024, a national holiday marking the anniversary of Hungary's failed revolution in 1848.

While Orban spoke from the steps of Budapest's National Museum, condemning the EU and calling for the "occupation of Brussels", Peter Magyar was addressing an estimated 10,000 people, alleging corruption and mishandling the economy at the top.

He announced he was forming a new party, with only weeks to go before Hungarians voted in European elections.

He doubled down on his accusations of corruption, releasing a secret recording made of a conversation with his ex-wife in 2023 in which she speaks about a high-profile trial.

Judit Varga said she was appalled by Magyar's actions, accusing him of abuse which he denied. He also fell out with a former friend, Orban minister Gergely Gulyás - who said Magyar was "one who first betrays his family, then betrays his country as an agent of Brussels".

Asked what he thought of his challenger, Orban told the BBC: "He left Fidesz, that's all."

By now Varga's ex-husband was making big strides politically and forming new friendships, among them popular actor Ervin Nagy.

Magyar took over a dormant party called Tisza, and won 29.6% of the vote and seven seats in the European Parliament. Tisza was well behind Orban's ruling Fidesz on 44.8%, but Magyar had made a powerful statement.

By autumn 2024, Magyar's new party was ahead of Fidesz in the polls and he tore into Orban's close ties with Russia as they led rival marches marking Hungary's 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union.

While Orban labelled Tisza as "warmongers" indulging in a "Brussels war march", Magyar taunted the prime minster as the man who had in 1989 called for Russian troops to leave Hungary but now trampled on the legacy of 1956 and was "the most loyal ally of the Kremlin".

"Mr Prime Minister, why won't you say 'Russians go home' any more?" he asked.

Magyar is no liberal. He has openly derided the liberal opposition that tried to take Orban on in the past, only to see the Fidesz leader storm to a two-thirds majority it needed to mould the constitution.

One key to his success has been his demolition of the fragmented, old opposition parties. He sees former Socialist leader Ferenc Gyurcsany as no better than Orban.

And he has not been afraid to take on the pro-Orban new outlets that dominate Hungary's media landscape.

Earlier this year he alleged he had been the target of an attempted "Russian-style" smear campaign involving a sex tape.

Journalists had been sent a black-and-white surveillance image apparently showing drugs on a table near a bed. The implication was that more footage was to come and Magyar moved to pre-empt it.

He admitted having consensual sex with an ex-girlfriend but was adamant he had not touched anything on the table and said he had been lured into a "honey-trap" set up by the secret services.

"My conscience is clear," he said, adding later that he had taken a drug test on 22 March to prove he had not consumed any drugs during the past months, and pointing out he had had similar negative tests in the past.

Until now, none of the accusations and barbs directed at Peter Magyar have stuck. As a former Fidesz adviser, he believes this gives him an advantage.

"I know them, I know their tricks. I know they're very much frightened," he said.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not for Peter Magyar but for the country."

Leaning against a wall near a news-stand in central Rome, Tommaso Silvestri, 65, scans the morning's front pages, their headlines swinging between "apocalypse," "scandal" and "disaster" after Italy's latest footballing collapse.

"We've made a real mess of it," he says, shaking his head. "We had players who couldn't even find the target."

"The golden days of Italian football are well and truly gone."

On Tuesday night in Zenica, four-time World Cup winners Italy failed to qualify for the tournament for a third consecutive time, losing 4-1 on penalties to Bosnia and Herzegovina after being reduced to 10 men before halftime.

Since winning the World Cup in 2006, the Azzurri have largely disappointed in international tournaments - with the exception of their surprise victory at the Euros in 2021 against England at Wembley.

"We are what our results say we are," Silvestri said. "When you shoot and can't even hit the goal, you're not going to go far. When it comes to taking the game home, Italy just doesn't get there anymore."

Last night's defeat drew swift and emotional reactions across Italian politics and society.

"Everything has a limit," lamented Ignazio La Russa, president of the Senate and a senior figure in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy party.

In a post on X, he wrote: "We're not going to the World Cup. We supported them, we hoped, we even railed against a couple of questionable refereeing decisions... but deep down we feared it. In fact, we knew it."

Gomorrah author and anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano also weighed in, pointing to deeper structural failures in Italian football, from governance to youth development.

"Clubs are corrupt and at the mercy of criminal organisations. True laundering vaults. No investment in young players, no care for second-generation talent. It's easier to buy foreign players than to develop new athletes," he said in a post on Instagram.

Across Italy, a legendary football nation with a rich history of producing world-class talent, many are wondering what went wrong. Giovanni Colli, 71, rolling his eyes while sipping an espresso at a café near the Pantheon, says he feels "betrayed."

"Not going to the World Cup three times in a row, how on earth did it happen? What a huge disappointment. Everyone should resign. Give the young players a chance," he says.

Italy's World Cup heartbreak was crystallised in the tear-streaked face of coach Rino Gattuso, who struggled to hold back his emotions after the national team's defeat.

"We don't deserve this, it's not fair. I'm sorry I couldn't make it happen," Gattuso said, eyes glistening, before retreating to the dressing room.

The legendary 2006 World Cup-winning midfielder was only given the job of coach last June.

Despite the disappointment, Gattuso expressed pride in his players: "I'm proud of my boys and what they gave on the pitch."

The match, decided on penalties after Italy were reduced to 10 men following Alessandro Bastoni's early red card, gave a brief moment of hope to Italians with Moise Kean's goal, only for it to end in dismay.

Gattuso admitted the team's shortcomings: "When you have chances and don't take them, football punishes you."

Reflecting on their elimination, he added: "This hurts. We gave everything we could. It's a real shock."

Sport journalist Elisabetta Esposito of La Gazzetta dello Sport told the BBC that Italian football was facing a difficult period - one that would take time to overcome, during which loyalty to individual clubs was outweighing support for the national team.

"The risk is that this third consecutive failure to qualify will deepen young people's disengagement from the Azzurri," she said.

"The disappointment is profound, but the country is not only disappointed but almost disillusioned. It's as if a new generation no longer knows what it means to cheer for their country."

Reflecting on Tuesday's match, Esposito added: "From a technical standpoint, everything went wrong. The team hasn't worked together enough. Rebuilding will require a long-term strategy, chasing immediate wins with rushed decisions won't succeed."

On a busy street in central Rome, 56-year-old Teresa is walking her dog among tourists and commuters rushing to work.

"Oh, we are not going to the World Cup?" she asks. "I don't know much about football, but that's a bit of disaster, isn't it?"

At least four people have been killed by a series of powerful explosions at an ammunitions depot in Burundi's largest city, Bujumbura, local residents have told the BBC.

The blasts erupted late on Tuesday at the facility, located in the suburb of Musaga, due to an electrical fault, an army spokesperson said.

Shrapnel and debris were propelled more than 5km (three miles) and several houses in nearby districts were destroyed by the force of the explosions.

The authorities have not yet provided any casualty figures but family members and eyewitnesses told the BBC of four separate deaths in the city. The AFP news agency quotes security sources as saying that dozens of people had died.

One woman told BBC Gahuza that a relative, who had been detained at Mpimba Central Prison, had died after a bomb hit the facility.

Numerous inmates at the prison, which is located near the ammunitions store, are reported to have been injured.

In the north-eastern neighbourhood of Gisandema, witnesses told BBC Gahuza that a bomb had destroyed a house and killed a domestic worker.

The authorities have said they cannot yet comment on the number of casualties as they are still assessing the extent of the damage.

The explosions sent plumes of smoke rising above the city, sparking panic in the city of more than a million people.

President Evariste Ndayishimiye, in a message on X, expressed his condolences to all Burundians, adding that the authorities are "here to help".

More BBC stories about Burundi:

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A judge in Brazil has blocked a project to build a zipline connecting the famous Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro to a nearby hill, Morro da Urca.

The attraction's developer said it would allow visitors to descend from Sugarloaf Mountain at speeds of almost 100km/h (62mph) via four ziplines covering a distance of 755m (0.47 miles).

The project - which started four years ago - had triggered protests from locals and environmentalists, who argued that the construction work was causing irreparable damage to the Unesco World Heritage Site.

The developer is expected to appeal against the decision.

Gricel Osorio Hor-Meyll, one of the activists who had led the campaign against the zipline told AFP news agency that the ruling was "a huge victory".

Those opposed to the attraction argued that in order to build the platforms needed to access the zipline, the rock on top of Sugarloaf Mountain would have to be excavated.

The company which manages the site said that excavation would be kept to a minimum by using areas with existing construction.

The project had the approval of both Rio City Council and the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN).

As part of Tuesday's ruling, the judge ordered that IPHAN and the project's developer pay 30m reals ($5.77m, £4.35m) in damages, stressing the "inestimable value of Sugarloaf Mountain, not only for Brazilians but for people worldwide".

The project has been at the centre of a legal battle for years and construction had been halted on a number of occasions as the company argued its case in court.

In January, construction work restarted after the high court had ruled that stopping would cause more damage than finishing the project at this late stage.

It added that the project was 95% completed.

That decision has now been overturned by Tuesday's ruling.

However, the legal saga is likely to continue with the company behind the project expected to lodge an appeal.

South Africa's army has officially been deployed to several parts of the country to help overwhelmed police clamp down on violent crimes, including illicit mining and gangs.

President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year announced the deployment of 2,200 soldiers to five of the country's nine provinces hardest hit by criminal activities.

Authorities say the deployment, set to run for a year, is aimed at restoring order to crime-ridden areas, but critics warn that using the military in civilian policing rarely delivers lasting results.

Illicit mining and gang violence are major problems in South Africa, which has one of the world's highest murder rates.

According to the latest crime statistics, covering the period between October and December 2025, around 71 people were killed each day.

An initial group of soldiers was deployed to several parts of Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg, in March.

The second, and main cohort, will help with operations in the Eastern Cape, Free State, North West and Western Cape provinces from 1 April for a year.

The BBC spoke to several residents in a Johannesburg suburb, Eldorado Park, a few weeks after soldiers arrived in the area. It is one of the three Johannesburg suburbs targeted in the initial military deployment due to the high levels of gang violence there.

Some of those interviewed expressed scepticism about the soldiers' presence in their neighbourhood.

Leola Davies, a 74-year-old pensioner, described Eldorado Park as a "hell-hole to live in".

"Sodom and Gomorra have nothing on this place. I stay indoors all day because I just don't want to be the next victim. Things are getting worse," she said.

Elviena le Roux, a mother of three, told the BBC she doesn't believe having the military in the area will help, saying it will only "make the violence worse".

Ronald Rabie, 56, said that while seeing the army patrolling the streets makes some difference, as it creates a safer environment for families, this peace is short-lived.

"Once they leave, things return to chaos – they need to be here permanently," the father of three said.

This is not the first time Ramaphosa has deployed troops to help bring down the country's high crime levels.

In 2023, over 3,000 soldiers were roped in to help tackle illicit mining across the country for six months.

In July 2021, the army was also deployed to help quell the deadly riots that had hit the country after the arrest of former South African President Jacob Zuma.

Under South Africa law, soldiers can only arrest civilians under rare circumstances and must then hand the suspect over to the police as soon as possible.

Security experts have repeatedly warned that the military is trained for combat - not for the kind of community-based policing needed to build trust.

And there is also history to contend with. The racist apartheid regime used the military to enforce their rule - a legacy that still shapes how some South Africans view soldiers on their streets today.

Criminologist Guy Lamb told the BBC he was not convinced the deployment would deliver lasting results, saying soldiers are "not designed to engage in policing" but rather to engage in combat and use maximum force.

"There's danger that they will escalate situations or respond very aggressively in... tense situations," he said.

He cited their conduct during the Covid-19 pandemic as an example. The army's deployment during that period, meant to help enforce the curfew and other restrictions, drew sharp criticism as reports came out of soldiers using excessive force, unlawfully detaining and harassing civilians.

Authorities have expressed optimism that the soldiers' presence will make a difference this time around but Lamb is not completely convinced.

He said that without "a dedicated plan... to try and address why crime is so violent in these sort of places", there was a strong likelihood it would flare up again once the soldiers leave.

"So we're likely to see this happening into the foreseeable future, because this plan of addressing what are the root causes of crime [in these] areas is not in place."

Additional reporting by Khanyisile Ngcobo

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A mass robotaxi outage in the Chinese city of Wuhan caused at least a hundred self-driving cars to stop mid-traffic, sparking renewed debate around the safety of driverless vehicles.

Local police said initial findings suggested a "system malfunction" caused multiple vehicles to stop in the middle of the road on Tuesday.

Videos on social media have documented the outage, with one appearing to show it resulting in a highway collision, although police said no injuries had been reported and passengers exited their vehicles safely.

Baidu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the police statement, posted on social media site Weibo, the cause of the incident is still under further investigation.

Baidu operates its Apollo Go driverless taxi service in dozens of cities across the world, mostly in China.

In December 2025, ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft announced partnerships with the Chinese technology giant to test its Apollo Go cars on UK roads, aiming to start trials in 2026.

However, both still need approval from regulators before they can begin the pilot programmes.

While driverless tech may be safer on average than human drivers, this incident showed it could "still go wrong in completely new ways," said Jack Stilgoe, professor of science and technology policy at University College London.

"If we're going to make good choices about this technology, we need to understand entirely new types of risk," he told BBC News.

The outage is not the first time self-driving cars have faced technical difficulties.

In December 2025, a large power outage in San Francisco led Waymo taxis to stop working around the city, causing huge traffic jams.

Meanwhile in August 2025, an Apollo Go robotaxi carrying a passenger in Chongqing fell into ​a construction pit.

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Israel has intensified its attacks on Lebanon this week, hitting areas outside of Hezbollah's control on Tuesday.

Strikes without warning hit a vehicle north of Beirut and the Jnah neighbourhood in the heart of the capital.

Attacks also continued in the city's southern suburbs and the country's south, both where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

A building was destroyed on the road to Beirut's airport after an evacuation order, and in the south, a strike hit a health facility, killing a paramedic, according to Lebanon's health ministry.

Israel's military said it had hit Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut and killed a senior commander and another senior figure from the Iran-backed armed group.

Hezbollah joined the ongoing regional war on 2 March, sending missiles towards Israel, after the US and Israel attacked the armed group's ally Iran on 28 February.

Israeli attacks have kept bombarding Lebanon as its troops have moved into the country's south.

On Tuesday, a vehicle was targeted in the Mansourieh area, a predominantly Christian residential neighbourhood north of Beirut.

Meanwhile, the Jnah neighbourhood in the heart of the capital was attacked after midnight. The Lebanese health ministry said the Al-Zahraa Hospital had received and treated "a number of those injured in the air strike".

Hassan Jalwan, who lives near Jnah, told AFP he heard several "big explosions" overnight.

"Nobody knows what's happening," he said, adding that "displaced people have been sleeping in the open" in the area.

The Dahieh neighbourhood to the south of Beirut, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, continues to be a target. A building was destroyed on Tuesday in Ghobeiry on the road to the airport following an evacuation order.

Also on Tuesday, Lebanon's health ministry said at least seven people had been killed by Israeli strikes in the country's south, including the paramedic.

The number of health workers who have been killed since the start of the war has now reached 53.

Earlier, the Lebanese army cleared its last positions in the south, pulling out from Ain Ibel and Rmeish villages a day after an army checkpoint was hit and a soldier was killed by an Israeli air strike, according to the Lebanese Armed Forces. The Israeli military has not appeared to have commented yet on the reported death.

However, some residents of the villages refuse to leave.

In the predominantly Christian village of Rmeish, Father Najib Al Amil appeared in a video on social media, where he said: "There is grass and soil. We rely on God and will stay in our village. We either all die together and lose our land or live and our villages will live with us."

Israel has announced its decision to control large swathes of land in southern Lebanon - up to the Litani River, about 30km from the border with Israel - to create a buffer security zone.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would keep security control over the territory even after the end of the current war against Hezbollah. The plan has drawn criticism from the UN.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave the south, but there are still tens of thousands who have refused to go.

Supply lines to the south have been cut by Israel targeting bridges and infrastructure, making villages in the south uninhabitable.

Katz said more than 600,000 displaced Lebanese residents would be "completely prohibited" from returning to that area until the safety of residents of northern Israel was guaranteed.

The Israeli defence minister also said all houses in villages near the border in Lebanon will be destroyed "according to the model of Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza".

In total, 1,268 people in Lebanon have been killed since the beginning of the attacks, the country's health ministry said on Tuesday.

More than one million people have been displaced, the UN reported.

This is critical time for Lebanon and the residents of the south. Many see Israel's strategy in the south mimicking that of Gaza - destruction, depopulation and occupation.

The government said earlier that this constitutes a violation of the country's sovereignty.

South Lebanon previously lived under Israeli occupation for nearly 18 years, between 1982 and 2000.

Some Lebanese have lived the displacement and loss of land generation after generation.

Many in Lebanon believe that Israel is more powerful than Hezbollah and capable of destroying the south with its advanced missiles and drones. At the same time, if Israel is to stay in the south, Hezbollah is more powerful on the ground and can engage in a guerrilla war to wear out the Israelis and prevent them from staying put.

In short, for the hundreds of thousands who have been forced out of their homes, this war is not ending anytime soon.

A Russian military plane has crashed in the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, killing 29 people on board, the Russian defence ministry has said.

Wreckage of the An-26 aircraft was found on Tuesday after the plane lost contact with authorities during a "routine flight", according to the ministry.

It blamed a "technical failure" and reported no external damage to the aircraft, implying that missiles, drones or birds are not suspected of causing the crash.

Seven crew members and 23 passengers had been on board as it flew over the Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Russia's Investigative Committee confirmed the crash and said it had opened an inquiry into a flight safety violation.

News agency Tass reported that communication with the plane was lost at about 18:00 local time (15:00 GMT) on Tuesday, and the wreckage was found following a search and rescue effort.

Ukraine has not commented on the crash.

The An-26 is a Soviet-era aircraft mainly used in a military capacity to transport heavy cargo and smaller numbers of passengers over a short-to-medium distance. It is manufactured by the Ukrainian aerospace company Antonov.

The planes have been used since the late 1960s, and have been involved in several deadly crashes.

Twenty-six people, mostly cadets, were killed when a Ukrainian An-26 came down in Kharkiv in 2020. The following year, 28 people were killed in a crash in the Russian Far East and in 2022, one person was killed in a crash in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region.

Fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces has been ongoing in Crimea since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion four years ago.

Ukrainian strikes have largely targeted Russian military bases in the peninsula, which borders the partly Russian-occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly demanded Russia withdraw from Crimea as part of a ceasefire. In November, a US-backed peace plan proposed Kyiv would cede control of Crimea.

Authorities in the Democratic Republic Congo have declared Wednesday a public holiday after the national football team qualified for their first World Cup in 52 years.

The Leopards reached the finals on Tuesday when Axel Tuanzebe's extra-time goal gave them a 1-0 win over Jamaica in the play-off.

DR Congo's ministry of labour and employment said that as a result of the "historic" victory, the nation could have the day off work to "celebrate in unity, fervour and national pride".

The central African nation has only played in the World Cup once before - in 1974 when the country was named Zaire.

Tuesday's match was an intense affair, with former Manchester United player Tuanzebe only breaking the deadlock in the 100th minute.

Videos of elated football fans celebrating in the capital, Kinshasa, have been circulating on social media. In the neighbourhood of Kingabwa, supporters took to the streets chanting "Christiano Ronaldo is next".

DR Congo's first match will be against Ronaldo's Portugal in the US city of Houston on 17 June.

They will also play Colombia and Uzbekistan in the group stages.

DR Congo are the 10th African nation to reach this year's expanded World Cup finals, hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada.

Additional reporting from Emery Makumeno in Kinshasa

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Divorced couples in Japan are now allowed to share custody of their children, after a landmark revision to Japan's Civil Code took effect on Wednesday.

Before the amendment was approved by parliament in 2024, Japan was the only G7 country that did not recognise the legal concept of joint custody.

Custody was typically granted to one parent - in most cases the mother - who had power to cut off the other parent's access to their children.

Domestic and international criticism has been mounting against the sole custody system in Japan, which critics say led many divorcees to become estranged from their children after losing custody of them.

Previously, divorcing couples in Japan were free to decide custody and visitation arrangements. But if they went to court over it, custody would only be awarded to one parent.

Under the new law, a family court can decide whether to grant sole or joint custody to divorcing couples.

Parents who divorced under the old system are also now eligible to have their custody arrangement reviewed by the family court.

The Civil Code revision also mandates child support payments after divorce, allowing the parent living with the child to claim 20,000 yen (£95; $125) from their ex-spouse every month.

Some are hopeful that the changes will help prevent cases of parental abduction, which have come into the spotlight in recent years - especially after allegations made by foreigners with Japanese ex-spouses.

In 2023, Japanese table tennis star Ai Fukuhara was accused by her Taiwanese ex-husband of abducting their son. He said she had cut off contact with him and refused to bring their son back to Taiwan. The pair later came to a settlement.

During the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, a French father who was based in Japan staged a hunger strike, calling attention to what he said was the kidnapping of his children by his ex-wife.

While some see the joint custody bill as a way to solve such controversies, not everyone is supportive of the revision. Some previously told BBC that they feared joint custody would force women to maintain ties with husbands even in cases of domestic violence.

Under the new law, the court will grant sole custody to divorcing couples if it finds instances of domestic violence or abuse.