The US State Department says it has "credible reports" that Hamas is planning an "imminent" attack on civilians in Gaza, which it says would violate the ceasefire agreement.

A statement released on Saturday said a planned attack against Palestinians would be a "direct and grave" violation of the ceasefire agreement and "undermine the significant progress achieved through mediation efforts".

The state department did not not provide further details on the attack and it is unclear what reports it was citing.

The first phase of the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel is currently in progress - all living hostages have been released and bodies of the deceased are still being returned to Israel.

Also part of the agreement, Israel freed 250 Palestinian prisoners in its jails and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.

Washington said it had already informed other guarantors of the Gaza peace agreement - which include Egypt, Qatar and Turkey - and demanded Hamas uphold its end of the ceasefire terms.

"Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire," the statement said.

Hamas has not yet commented on the statement.

President Donald Trump has previously warned Hamas against the killing of civilians.

"If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them," Trump said in a post on Truth Social earlier this week.

He later clarified that he would not be sending US troops into Gaza.

Last week, BBC Verify authenticated graphic videos that showed a public execution carried out by Hamas gunmen in Gaza.

The videos showed several men with guns line up eight people, whose arms were tied behind their backs, before killing them in a crowded square.

BBC Verify could not confirm the identity of the masked gunmen, though some appeared to be wearing the green headbands associated with Hamas.

On Saturday, Israel said it had received two more bodies from Gaza that Hamas said are hostages, though they have yet to be formally identified.

So far, the remains of 10 out of 28 deceased hostages had been returned to Israel.

Separately on Saturday, 11 members of one Palestinian family were killed by an Israeli tank shell, according to the Hamas-run civil defence ministry, in what was the deadliest single incident involving Israeli soldiers in Gaza since the start of the ceasefire.

The Israeli military said soldiers had fired at a "suspicious vehicle" that had crossed the so-called yellow line demarcating the area still occupied by Israeli forces in Gaza.

There are no physical markers of this line, and it is unclear if the bus did cross it. The BBC has asked the IDF for the coordinates of the incident.

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

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

In September, a UN commission of inquiry said Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel categorically rejected the report as "distorted and false".

Rachel Reeves chose to stress the long-term damage done to the UK economy by the 2020 Brexit deal, in her remarks at a key international economic committee at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In remarks published this weekend, the chancellor told the world's leading finance ministers and central bankers: "The UK's productivity challenge has been compounded by the way in which the UK left the European Union."

She quoted the OBR's calculation of a 4% long-term hit relative to remaining in the UK, and said the UK "acknowledges this" in seeking stronger trade ties.

Labour had been reluctant to stress arguments about economic downsides from Brexit.

However, since its conference last month, ministers have been increasingly strident in making such arguments.

The open use of this argument in the most high-level global economic policy council, including the G7, China, India, the EU and European Central Banks, would have been unsurprising around the table. It confirms a notable change of emphasis, domestically.

It is expected to become a key part of the government's argument in the run-up to the Budget on 26 November, where a large part of the need for new measures - expected to be tax rises - will be down to a downgrade to long-term UK productivity.

The Office for Budget Responsibility will be expected to spell out in detail why any downgrade has occurred, when it publishes its forecast at next month's Budget.

Brexit is expected to feature. External economists have pointed to a fall in investment amid uncertainty after the referendum, as well as an underperformance on goods trade. Others point to robust services trade, and new freedoms to do trade deals around the world.

The issue is sensitive right now with government deciding on negotiating positions for the Brexit "reset" including scrapping most post-Brexit checks on food and farm trade, and helping UK manufacturers join consortia to bid for Europe's surging defence budgets.

European ministers urged maximum ambition in the talks to help mitigate the impact of trade wars elsewhere in the world.

Reeves announced tax rises worth £40bn a year at her first Budget last November, including hikes to payroll taxes paid by employers, and insisted she would not have to repeat the move in subsequent years.

But the chancellor is now facing the prospect of another repair job to the public finances.

The Conservatives opened up a clear dividing line on the issue at their conference, pledging to slash public spending by £47bn a year if they win the next election through cuts to welfare, the civil service and foreign aid.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed says his job should be "on the line" over a pledge to build 1.5 million new homes in England - but two leading experts have told BBC Panorama the government looks set to miss its target.

Prof Paul Cheshire, who has advised previous governments on planning policy, said there was "absolutely no way" it would succeed.

Meanwhile, Neil Jefferson of the Home Builders Federation, which represents private housebuilding companies, warned the government's target was "looking increasingly distant".

But Reed insisted he would "absolutely" meet the goal and told Panorama the widespread scepticism would make "celebration all the sweeter" when he hit it.

The promise to build the homes over the next Parliament, which is due to run until 2029, was a cornerstone of Labour's manifesto.

"My job should be on the line if I fail to meet my target," Reed said. "I expect to be held to account."

But Mr Jefferson has told Panorama housebuilding is "flatlining" at about 200,000 new homes a year, instead of the 300,000 annually required by the target.

A cumbersome planning process, environmental regulations and skill shortages - among other issues - were impacting the industry's building rates, he said.

Many big or controversial planning applications are currently decided not by trained council planning officers, but by elected local councillors on planning committees.

This means national priorities like building more homes often clash with local opposition.

Councils are also supposed to adopt a "local plan", a document outlining where development should happen and how it aligns with national policy. These plans can help to streamline planning approvals - if a proposal fits the plan, it should get permission unless there is a strong reason to reject it.

This means these documents are controversial, and can often face fierce local opposition.

Fewer than a third of councils currently have an up-to-date local plan in England, according to the Planning Inspectorate.

But Reed told Panorama the government will soon force councils to adopt a local plan.

Under proposed changes, councils will have to produce a plan within 30 months of starting the process - instead of the current average of seven years.

The government has also announced it will boost funding and training for planning authorities to help them with their plans.

Reed insisted government reforms would help developers build more homes, including mandating new housebuilding targets for councils and "more powers" for him to call in - or review - "unreasonably" rejected housing development schemes.

Reforms to the rules governing protected green belt land, which makes up 12.5% of land in England, have also been suggested by the government.

The first green belt was created in the 1930s, to try to stop cities from sprawling into the countryside. But many sections of green belt today contain intensive farming units, industrial buildings, quarries and golf courses.

The government has come up with a new concept called the "grey belt". The aim is to make it easier to get planning permission for green belt land that is considered low quality or has already been built on.

However, the government has left it up to each local authority to decide which sites qualify locally as grey belt.

Prof Cheshire, a former economist at the London School of Economics, said this was a missed opportunity: "If the grey belt had been defined in a legally watertight way… then it would have been cut and dried and you could have built a lot of houses, but they didn't do that.

"They left it to the fuzziness of the planning system and therefore to local lobbying, and... it won't happen", he said.

For Prof Cheshire, the government's reforms are "not going to make much difference". He added that "there's absolutely no way that we will build 1.5 million houses".

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An independent inquiry into "repeated failures" at an NHS trust's maternity units has been announced by Health Secretary Wes Streeting, following potentially avoidable harm to babies and mothers.

Earlier this year a BBC investigation revealed that the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTH) over the past five years may have been prevented.

Streeting said a thorough investigation was required to understand what had "gone so catastrophically wrong" at the trust's maternity units at Leeds General Infirmary and St James's University Hospital.

In a statement, the trust told the BBC it was already "taking significant steps to address improvements".

The BBC has now spoken to more than 70 families who have described traumatic care, with some cases going back more than 15 years.

They include Fiona Winser-Ramm and Dan Ramm whose daughter, Aliona, died in January 2020 at Leeds General Infirmary. An inquest found "a number of gross failures" that "directly contributed" to her death.

Four years later, Amarjit Kaur and Mandip Singh Matharoo's daughter Asees was stillborn at the same hospital.

Both couples were among a group of bereaved Leeds families who wrote to Streeting requesting an independent inquiry following the BBC's initial coverage.

They later shared their experiences with him in person before the inquiry was announced.

"We know we are not alone, and that there's other families that have experienced what we have," said Amarjit.

Fiona added that "we can't quite believe it yet".

"I think the scale of this inquiry will be enormous. There are so many people who don't even know they are victims yet and it is going to snowball at an alarming pace," she added.

Streeting said he was "shocked" by the bereaved families' stories and the "repeated maternity failures" that were "made worse by the unacceptable response of the trust".

"I do think there is an exceptional case in Leeds to have a Nottingham-style independent inquiry into the failures," he said.

Nottingham University Hospitals Trust is at the centre of a public inquiry that will examine 2,500 cases of maternity failings on a national level.

Streeting said he hoped the Leeds inquiry would help the families to learn the truth about what went wrong in their care.

The Department of Health has not yet revealed the inquiry's terms of reference or details of who will lead it.

Bereaved families want Donna Ockenden - the senior midwife who led the review into maternity failings at Shrewsbury and Telford and is currently leading the Nottingham review – to also chair the Leeds inquiry.

They said Ms Ockenden had the trust of families and proven experience in uncovering systemic failings in maternity care.

The BBC has previously spoken to whistleblowers who said the previous rating of "good" for LTH maternity services did not reflect the reality.

The body responsible for inspecting NHS hospitals, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) downgraded both of the trust's maternity units to "inadequate" in June, after unannounced inspections raised concerns that women and babies were "at risk of avoidable harm".

Inspectors also highlighted a "blame culture" at the trust, which resulted in staff being reluctant to raise concerns and incidents.

The Leeds units are also currently part of a rapid national review into maternity and neonatal services across England, which was launched in June and is being led by Baroness Valerie Amos.

Brendan Brown, chief executive of LTH NHS Trust, apologised to bereaved families and said he hoped the inquiry would provide them with "answers".

He said: "We are determined to do better. We want to work with the families who have used our services to understand their experiences so that we can make real and lasting improvements.

"I would also like to reassure families in Leeds who will be using our services currently, that we are already taking significant steps to address improvements to our maternity and neonatal services, following reviews by the Care Quality Commission and NHS England."

Families say serious questions now need answering about what Sir Julian Hartley, the man in charge of the trust for ten years until 2023, knew about poor maternity care.

He's now in charge of the health care regulator in England, the Care Quality Commission.

In a statement, Sir Julian told the BBC that while he was Chief Executive of Leeds Trust, he was "absolutely committed to ensuring good patient care across all services, including maternity, but clearly this commitment wasn't enough to prevent some families suffering pain and loss".

He said he was "truly sorry" for this.

Lauren Caufield whose daughter, Grace Kilburn, died in 2022, and also met Streeting said:

"It is completely unacceptable that nothing has been done to date to look into the situations with Sir Julian Hartley. We hope the inquiry will do that."

Do you have more information about this story?

You can reach Divya directly and securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +44 7961 390 324, by email at divya.talwar@bbc.co.uk or her Instagram account.

British soldiers will be granted new powers to shoot down drones threatening military bases.

The plans, to be unveiled by Defence Secretary John Healey in a speech on Monday, are intended to allow troops to take faster, more decisive action.

Four British airbases used by US forces reported mystery drone sightings last year, while drones have disrupted airspace across Europe a number of times in recent months.

The new powers will only apply to military sites, but could be extended to civilian locations such as airports.

Healey is set to announce the introduction of a "kinetic option", first reported by the Daily Telegraph, that would enable British troops or Ministry of Defence (MoD) police to shoot drones posing a threat to a military site in the UK.

Existing protocol mandates soldiers divert drones or disrupt their GPS signal using counter-drone equipment.

Shooting down an unidentified drone is only allowed in extreme circumstances.

RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, RAF Feltwell in Norfolk and RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire all reported drone incursions in November last year.

About 60 RAF personnel were sent to assist the US Air Force in its investigation.

Neither US nor UK officials have said who might have been behind the drone activity.

The airbases have strategic significance for the US military. It recently deployed F-22A fighter jets to RAF Lakenheath, days after the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites in June.

Recent drone sightings across the European Union prompted a leaders' summit in Denmark earlier this month.

Several EU member states have backed plans for a multi-layered "drone wall" to quickly detect, track and destroy Russian drones.

Twenty Russian drones crossed into Poland in September while Russian MiG-31 jets entered Estonian airspace later in the month. Russia has denied or downplayed the incursions.

Other recent drones sightings have also forced numerous European airports to close, including across two consecutive days in Munich, Germany.

Airports in Denmark and Norway also shut after unidentified drones were spotted near airport and military airspaces.

Russia denied any involvement, while Danish authorities said there was no evidence Moscow was involved.

Bereaved families are calling for a public inquiry into what they say are "repeated failures" by the UK government to protect vulnerable people from a website promoting suicide.

A report by the Molly Rose Foundation says departments were warned 65 times about the online forum, which BBC News is not naming, and others like it but did not act.

The suicide prevention charity says at least 133 people have died in the UK as a result of a toxic chemical promoted by the site and similar forums.

The government has not said whether it will consider an inquiry but said sites must prevent users from accessing illegal suicide and self-harm content or face "robust enforcement, including substantial fines".

Families and survivors have written to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer asking him for an inquiry to look into why warnings from coroners and campaigners have been ignored.

David Parfett, whose son Tom took his own life in 2021, told the BBC successive governments had offered sympathy but no accountability.

"The people who host the suicide platforms to spread their cult-like messages that suicide is normal - and earn money from selling death - continue to be several steps ahead of government ministers and law enforcement bodies," he said.

"I can think of no better memorial for my son than knowing people like him are protected from harm while they recover their mental health."

David and six other families are being represented by the law firm Leigh Day who have also written a letter to the prime minister highlighting their concerns about the main suicide forum.

The letter says victims were groomed online, and tended to be in their early 20s, with the youngest known victim being 13.

It argues a public inquiry is needed because coroners' courts cannot institute the changes needed to protect vulnerable people.

'Ignored and dismissed'

According to the report, coroners raised concerns and sent repeated warnings to the Home Office, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Department of Health and Social Care on dozens of occasions since 2019, when the forum that has been criticised by the families first emerged.

The report highlighted four main findings:

• The Home Office's refusal to tighten regulation of the substance, which remains easily obtainable online, while UK Border Force "struggles to respond to imports" from overseas sellers

• The media regulator Ofcom's decision to rely on "voluntary measures" from the main forum's operators rather than taking steps to restrict UK access

• Repeated failures by government departments to act on coroners' warnings

• Operational shortcomings, including inconsistent police welfare checks and delays in making antidotes available to emergency services

A government spokesperson said that the substance in question "is closely monitored and is reportable under the Poisons Act" meaning retailers should tell the authorities if they suspect it is being bought to cause harm.

But campaigners say the government's response has been fragmented and slow, with officials "passing the parcel" rather than taking co-ordinated action.

Adele Zeynep Walton, whose sister Aimee died in 2022, said families like hers had been "ignored and dismissed".

"She was creative, a very talented artist, gifted musician," she told BBC News.

"Aimee was hardworking and achieved great GCSE results, however she was shy and quiet and struggled to make friends.

"Every time I learn of a new life lost to the website that killed my sister three years ago, I'm infuriated that another family has had to go through this preventable tragedy."

The demand for an inquiry follows concerns raised by the BBC in 2023, when an investigation revealed sites offering instructions and encouragement for suicide and evading regulations.

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, said the state's failure to act had "cost countless lives".

He also accused Ofcom of being "inexplicably slow" to restrict UK access to the main website the Foundation has raised concerns about.

Under the Online Safety Act, which became law in October 2023, Ofcom got the power in March 2025 to take action against sites hosting illegal content, which includes assisting suicide. If sites fail to show they have systems in place to remove illegal material, Ofcom can block them or impose fines of up to £18m.

UK users are currently unable to access the forum, which is based in the US. A message on the forum's homepage says it was not blocked to people in the UK as a result of government action but instead because of a "proactive" decision to "protect the platform and its users".

"We operate under the protection of the First Amendment. However, UK authorities have signalled intentions to enforce their domestic laws on foreign platforms, potentially leading to criminal liability or service disruption," the message reads.

In a statement, Ofcom said: "In response to our enforcement action, the online suicide forum put in place a geo-block to restrict access by people with UK IP addresses.

"Services that choose to block access by people in the UK must not encourage or promote ways to avoid these restrictions."

It added the forum remained on its watchlist and a previously-launched investigation into it remained open while it checked the block was being maintained.

• If you, or someone you know, has been affected by mental health issues BBC Action Line has put together a list of organisations which can help.

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Saying "no" to a boss can feel impossible.

Whatever our job, we all want to impress rather than disappoint.

But ambition can be a very slippery slope. Before you know it, work is coming home with you - seeping into weekends and disrupting time with family and friends.

Experts agree learning to set boundaries is the way to stem the flow.

Career coach Helen Tupper, co-founder of Squiggly Careers, suggests a simple language shift can help reinforce boundaries.

She recommends replacing "I can't" with "I don't".

"I can't" invites negotiation - people might try to convince you that you actually can," she says.

But "I don't" is more definitive and harder to challenge.

For example you can say "I don't go to meetings after 5pm on a Wednesday because I pick my kids up then," she suggests.

Model and TV chef Lorraine Pascale says not doing this ultimately led to her burning out.

Alongside her television career, she opened a patisserie in Covent Garden and published a series of cookbooks, all whilst raising her daughter.

"I just wasn't very good at saying no.

"You don't want to upset people, everyone's feeding stuff in your ear as to what you should be doing. So you just keep going," she told BBC Woman's Hour.

She adds that her perfectionism, including personally approving every recipe in her books, didn't help.

For Lorraine, burnout manifested physically and mentally - including "not wanting to go near" cakes.

"It was like an all-body reaction - a tightness in my chest," she explains. "I was having arguments with myself. A lot of self-blame, a lot of guilt, and a lot of tiredness."

Lorraine's experience shows burnout can affect anyone at any level, even if statistics suggest it is more likely to happen to women - in part because of added family responsibilities.

Dr Claire Ashley, author of The Burnout Doctor, says on a practical front, sticking to a firm routine over when you finish work each day allows our brains to complete the "stress cycle" and enjoy time off.

But the real solution is adjusting your goals to your "current capacity".

"Ask yourself whether what you want to achieve is reasonable given your mental and emotional resources at the time," she says.

In Lorraine's case this involved stepping back from cooking and going to therapy. This helped her understand that the toxic elements of her drive to impress stemmed from her childhood in foster care.

She's since begun studying psychology herself and says she is "much better" - gradually getting back into cooking on more "intentional" terms.

Of course, stress and long hours are part of any job.

But stats show an increase in the number of workers reaching breaking point.

Nine out of 10 workers have experienced high or extreme levels of pressure or stress in the past year, research suggests.

Feeling stressed or burnt out isn't the same as having clinical burnout - even if we often use the term loosely.

Dr Ashley says exhaustion, detachment, and reduced performance are the three defining symptoms.

Unless we meet all these, we don't yet have diagnosable burnout. But of course this doesn't mean we're not on the way.

'Run your own race'

Tupper, who wrote her book after experiencing burnout herself, says it's important to stop, celebrate and acknowledge your own successes, not just focus on the next thing.

Doing our best to avoid comparisons with colleagues can also help, so we run our own race, Tupper adds.

Of course, not everyone is in a position to push back at work - especially in corporate, or hierarchical job environments.

Dr Richard Duggins, an NHS psychiatrist and the author of Burnout-Free Working, often helps patients who feel they can't assert boundaries.

He encourages workers to talk to their boss regardless of how junior they are.

"Most employers, even the hard-nosed ones, will listen and make adjustments when they understand that preventing burnout benefits everyone."

He says setting boundaries, asking for help, or adjusting workload or flexibility can all help, but in the end if the workplace environment doesn't change then we need to make changes to protect ourselves.

Appreciating our life stages can be help with this, notes Dr Ashley.

"It's okay to say that someone working part-time, or with family responsibilities, may not be able to match the workload of a younger colleague."

As Lorraine puts it: "Ambitious is fine. Being ambitious is a beautiful thing, but just learn to say no more often."

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A massive monument of General Robert E Lee that once sparked riots in the Virginia city of Charlottesville is now a pile of melted-down bronze, artfully displayed in a Los Angeles museum.

Next to the sculpture are barrels of toxic "slag" leftover from the melting process.

Around the corner, there is a massive, graffitied equestrian statue of Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson – the two most famous Confederate generals in the US Civil War, which the Confederacy lost in 1865 and ultimately led to the end of slavery in the United States.

"They fought for slavery," says curator Hamza Walker, who has been working for eight years to acquire and borrow the massive monuments amid lawsuits and the logistical challenges of moving tens of thousands of pounds of bronze and granite to Los Angeles.

"The idea of lionising those figures. What did they believe? They believed in white supremacy. Period."

Coming at a time when President Donald Trump is ordering statues and paintings of Confederate generals to be reinstalled, the warring narratives of American history are at the heart of "Monuments," which opens 23 October at The Brick and at the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The 18 decommissioned Confederate monuments are displayed alongside pieces of contemporary art. The massive, graffitied statue of Lee and Jackson, for example, stands next to a giant replica sculpture of the "General Lee" car from the iconic TV show, The Dukes of Hazzard.

President Trump has often spoken of General Lee's bravery and he and others have criticized the removal and toppling of Confederate monuments, saying it's revisionist history.

White nationalists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, triggering deadly clashes, to keep the statue from being removed. In the aftermath, similar statues sparked clashes in cities across the US.

"Under this historical revision, our Nation's unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed," President Trump wrote in a March executive order calling for paintings and monuments to be reinstalled.

But Mr Walker says putting Lee and Jackson on pedestals – even though they lost the war – is racist and promotes the Lost Cause ideology that argues the Civil War was a noble cause for states' rights and not about slavery.

"States rights to do what? The reason for the Civil War was slavery," he said, adding that it perpetuates the idea that the South was a "noble victim", and that slavery wasn't so terrible.

"If you could distance them from slavery, right, then you could portray them as heroes, even though they lost the war and were on the wrong side of history, fighting for something that was morally repugnant," he says.

The centrepiece of the show is "Unmanned Drone" – a completely reconstructed sculpture of Stonewall Jackson by artist Kara Walker, who transformed the horse and its rider heading into battle into a headless, zombie-like creature.

"The southern vernacular would be a 'haint', which would be a ghostly form," Kara Walker, who is not related to Hamza Walker, told the BBC when asked how she describes the work. "It's an attempt to rethink the legacies of Stonewall Jackson as a mythology, as mythological holder for white supremacy."

Most of the monuments on display will be returned to the cities and towns they've been borrowed from when the show closes in May. But Kara Walker's sculpture will need to find a new home. And the bronze ingots from the melted down Lee sculpture will be transformed again into a new work of art.

The statue was removed in 2021 and melted in 2023 after the Charlottesville City Council voted to donate the statue to the Jefferson School - African American Heritage Center.

"It's a toxic representation of history, this lost cause narrative, and we're purifying it," says Jalane Schmidt, an activist and professor who was there when the statue came down in Charlottesville, and when it was melted at a secret foundry. She came to see it in its new form in Los Angeles.

Living in Charlottesville, she said, the statue was always in the background until a teenage girl in 2016 started a petition to rename Lee Park and remove the statue because she found it offensive that the city would celebrate someone who fought for slavery.

The statue was the focal point for the Unite the Right rally in 2017, which turned deadly when a 21-year-old white nationalist plowed his car into counter protesters killing Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist.

Schmidt says the petition and the rally changed public opinion about the monuments in Charlottesville and elsewhere.

"Especially after Unite the Right, after we were attacked, well, clearly this was evidence that, you know, people are willing to die for symbols, but they're also willing to kill for them," she said. "We had to remove them just for our own health."

Millions of Indians are celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights, one of Hinduism's most significant and widely observed festivals.

While lamps and firecrackers light up homes and streets during the festival, they also worsen air pollution - a problem especially pronounced in northern India, where winter months already bring poor air quality.

This year, the Supreme Court has permitted the sale and use of "green crackers" in the capital, Delhi, to help curb air pollution, ending a ban on crackers that has been in place since 2020.

"Green crackers" claim to emit 20–30% less pollution than traditional firecrackers, but critics doubt their actual effectiveness in protecting the environment.

In recent years, several states have restricted or banned firecrackers to combat rising air pollution, but the rules are often flouted, further worsening air quality in the days after Diwali.

But Diwali is about much more than fireworks. Food plays a central role in the celebrations.

Families prepare a variety of traditional Indian sweets which are shared with friends and neighbours. Festive meals often include rich curries, savoury snacks, and special breads.

In the days leading up to the festival, people clean and decorate their homes, shop for new clothes, and buy traditional sweets to exchange as gifts with friends and family.

Many also create traditional and colourful rangoli designs outside their doors to invite luck and positivity. On Diwali itself, families worship Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth.

Diwali's appeal goes beyond religion, drawing people from different communities and faiths to join in the celebrations.

Across India's cities and towns, markets bustle with shoppers buying sweets, gifts, decorations, and firecrackers, giving a significant boost to the economy each year.

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A cargo plane has skidded off a runway at Hong Kong International Airport and landed in the sea, killing at least one person, local media have reported.

The Emirates flight, operating as Aerotranscargo, was arriving from Dubai just before 04:00 local time when it hit a vehicle on the north runway, local media reports.

Four crew members on board have been rescued and taken to hospital, but two ground staff "fell into the sea", a statement from the Civil Aviation department says. Their condition is unclear.

The affected runway is closed, but the airport's other two runways are still in operation.

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

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She's a Hollywood A-lister, with a mantelpiece groaning under the weight of awards. But Cate Blanchett has taken an unexpected diversion from her day job - to immerse herself in the world of the humble seed.

Her eyes light up as she enthuses about the banksia species from her native Australia.

"It's quite a brutal looking seed pod that only releases its seed in extremely high temperatures," she tells us.

"It does look like a cross between a mallet and a toilet brush. So they're not always pretty, but yet what comes out of them is so spectacular."

We meet her at Kew's Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) at Wakehurst botanic garden in Sussex. She lives locally and teamed up with the project as it celebrates its 25th anniversary.

"Really, I stumbled upon Wakehurst. I was just in awe of the landscape and I always feel regenerated by being in the natural world," she says.

"And then I discovered the seed bank, and I literally had my mind blown by the work that goes on here… and I thought, anything I can do to be connected to it - I found it so inspiring."

The MSB is home to more than 2.5 billion seeds collected from 40,000 wild plant species around the world.

The seeds, which come in every shape, size and colour, are carefully processed, dried and then stored in freezers at a chilly -20C.

The conservation project was opened by The King - then the Prince of Wales - in 2000. He's taken part in a special episode of a Kew podcast about the project called Unearthed: The Need For Seeds with Cate Blanchett.

In the recording he talks about his concerns that many plant species are being lost.

"I know how absolutely critical it all is, and the destruction of rainforests, the extinction of endless species, which have very likely remarkable properties," he tells the podcast.

When the seed bank first opened, it was seen as a doomsday vault - a back-up store of seeds to safeguard wild plants from extinction.

But 25 years on, the collection is being used for a different purpose: to restore environments that are under threat.

"We want those seeds to be back out in the landscape," explained Dr Elinor Breman from the MSB, who's been showing Cate Blanchett the team's work.

"We're just providing a safe space for them until we can get them back out into a habitat where they can thrive and survive."

This includes projects like one taking place on the South Downs. A special mix of seeds from the MSB are being sewn to help restore the rare chalk grasslands there.

And this restoration work is being repeated around the world.

"We've been to every kind of habitat, from sea level to about 5,000m, and from pole to pole - literally," explained Dr Breman.

"And we're involved in restoring tropical forest, dry deciduous forest, grassland, steppe - you name it - we're trying to help people put those plants back in place."

The seed bank also helped to restore plants after intense wildfires swept across Australia in 2019. Cate Blanchett says this meant a lot to her.

"There are almost 9,000 species of Australian plant that are stored [at the MSB]. And we know that bushfires are getting increasingly more intense. And it's sad to say - but knowing that insurance policy exists, is of great solace to me."

Working as an ambassador for Wakehurst has meant that the actor has had a chance to get hands on with the seeds.

"Have I got dirt under my fingernails? Well, I'm trying to turn my brown thumbs green," she laughs.

"You know, living in Sussex, you can't not but become a passionate gardener. So I've had a lot of questions about how one stores seeds as a lay person, and I've learned a lot about that. My seed management has definitely, definitely improved."

And after spending so much time with the researchers at the MSB, is she at all tempted to swap the film set for the lab?

"I wish I had the skill - maybe I could play a scientist," she laughs.

Cate Blanchett describes the seed bank as the UK's best kept secret - and believes that over the next 25 years its work will continue to grow in importance.

"You often think, where are the good news stories? And we're actually sitting inside one," she tells us.

"You come here, you visit the seed bank, you walk through such a biodiverse landscape, and you leave uplifted. You know change is possible and it's happening."

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The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is investigating claims Russian hackers stole hundreds of sensitive military documents and published them on the dark web.

The Mail on Sunday first reported the files on the dark web - an area of internet that can only be accessed through particular software - hold details of eight RAF and Royal Navy bases as well as MoD staff names and emails.

Maintenance and construction contractor Dodd Group confirmed it suffered a ransomware incident and it was taking the claims "extremely seriously".

The MoD said in a statement it was "actively investigating the claims that information relating to the MoD has been published on the dark web".

"To safeguard sensitive operational information, we will not comment any further on the details," it added in a statement.

The Mail on Sunday reported the documents hold information about a number of sensitive RAF and Navy bases, including RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, where the US Air Force's F-35 jets are based.

A Dodd Group spokesperson said: "We can confirm that the Dodd Group recently experienced a ransomware incident whereby an unauthorised third-party gained temporary access to part of our internal systems.

"We took immediate steps to contain the incident, swiftly secure our systems and engaged a specialist IT forensic firm to investigate what happened.

"We are taking these claims extremely seriously and are working hard to validate this."

The hacks follow a series of high-profile data breaches at the MoD.

In August it was revealed thousands of Afghans brought to safety in the UK had their personal data exposed after an MoD sub-contractor suffered a data breach.

Last year the personal information of an unknown number of serving UK military personnel was accessed in a significant data breach.

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There is an eerie emptiness at the seat of US economic power.

The US Treasury is in shutdown like much of the federal government.

Most staff are furloughed as the world's finance ministers and bankers jet in for the International Monetary Fund annual meetings a few blocks away, their delayed flights handled by a small number of unpaid air traffic controllers.

There is, however, one clear message the Trump administration is notably keen to get out, not so much for its domestic audience but for the bewildered world outside.

And they delivered it in the middle of last week to a small number of people ushered into the Treasury and what is said to be the finest room in Washington DC, the ornate and marbled Cash Room, which hosted the inaugural reception for post-civil war president, Ulysses Grant.

"Make no mistake," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent alongside Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer, as they fired the latest salvo in the ongoing 2025 global trade war. "This is China versus the world."

This simple message connects several extraordinary economic currents swirling around the world right now.

They include China's new export controls on critical minerals, fears of an AI bubble bursting, the tariff chaos and even the development of an erotic chatbot by OpenAI.

The world always seems to tilt a little on its axis in the two weeks a year that top bankers and finance ministers mass in Washington DC for their meetings at the IMF.

It is rare that the host itself is the main source of upheaval. Normally it would be a developing country, or perhaps the eurozone in the 2010s and infamously the UK in 2022.

The decisions and uncertainty arising from US trade policy, dizzying markets and decisions over its interest rates, loom large.

The inescapable signal being sent by the two most powerful US trade negotiators as they spoke to a small group of media in the Treasury's Cash Room was that China last week fired perhaps its most potent weapon yet by dramatically increasing restrictions on the trade of rare earth components.

These are critical to the production of high-tech goods ranging from electric cars to military hardware.

Bessent called the move a "Chinese chokehold" on the world.

• China has found Trump's pain point - rare earths
• Europe strives for rare earth independence from China

China's "sweeping expansion" of export controls on rare earth elements and equipment, as well as electric vehicle battery tech, industrial diamonds and super hard materials is "an exercise in economic coercion on every country in the world", said Greer.

This accusation is being made as his own boss, President Donald Trump, attempts to redraw global trade relations by using tariffs to eliminate US trade deficits.

He may have produced what is the toughest tariffs system the world has seen since 1933 but the disruption it has caused has been surprisingly muted so far.

The biggest economy on the planet is now behind a significant tariff wall but it's yet to feel the impact, partly thanks to a wealth boom built on some rather frothy tech valuations.

The conclusion to take from that is either the world economy is more shock absorbent than thought or it is just a matter of timing, with the real pain ahead.

Companies exporting to the US have swallowed the cost of tariffs, which are effectively import taxes, in their profit margins. But is that only for the time being?

The wall of tariffs that the US has built around its economy has led to more trade, for example, from China to Europe and Africa.

The US itself has been protected, for now, from the profound uncertainties, higher prices and domestic living standards impacts of the tariffs and the 10% fall in the value of the dollar.

Some insulation has come from booming AI tech sector share valuations, creating a profound wealth effect in certain households across the US, calculated by JP Morgan economists as worth $180bn per year.

• Landmark deal to cut global shipping emissions in tatters
• China's electric cars are becoming slicker and cheaper

The thin line between boom and bubble is impossible to calculate. Sometimes, it can be felt.

I was standing outside the Nasdaq in New York's Times Square, where the high tech market which symbolises US private sector tech ascendancy publicises its latest IPOs (stock launches) to the world.

One of the dozens of funds which raises real cash to plough into crypto, joyously "rang the opening bell", despite their share price already having slumped.

The executives then filed out into the Square to watch a giant video of themselves ringing the bell, among confused tourists. In fact, inside the Nasdaq, there is no bell, or trading floor either, just a bank of futuristic screens. Is it just hubris?

Another screen reminds us it is the 20th anniversary of the Nasdaq flotation of another tech company which went public here, now worth $3tn, Google.

This week, OpenAI's Sam Altman revealed that ChatGPT was developing chatbot erotica options.

This comes at a time when analysts are taking a hard look at firms like Altman's which have emerged at the front of the pack in the AI race.

A raft of convoluted deals where major US firms including chipmakers are investing in their own suppliers and vice versa has raised eyebrows further about the potential that the billions being poured into data centres, AI start-ups and cutting-edge manufacturing plants could be fuelling an ever-growing bubble.

So are the Chinese trying to weaponise these fears that it's all about to burst?

This is what Jamieson Greer seemed to suggest when he said the Chinese export controls on minerals critical to many important semiconductors gives Beijing control over the entire global economy and the technology supply chain which powers the very firms that could be keeping the US economy afloat.

"This will impact artificial intelligence systems and high tech products," he said.

Bessent also joined in, saying US media reports that China was playing hardball and was prepared to use financial markets to hurt the US was like "taking dictation" from the Chinese communist party. He went on, unusually, to accuse a named Chinese negotiator of going rogue.

None of this seems like a game of chess.

This is not carefully considered maestros thinking out their strategies, six moves ahead of time. This is more like playing pool by smashing the balls indiscriminately around the table, and then attempting to break the cue, or the table, or both.

Tariffs, counter-tariffs and export controls amount to mutually assured destruction manoeuvres which are cloaked behind the general assumption that President Trump will always pull back from the brink. The more that is baked in, the higher the risk of a shock.

In this situation, it is sensible game theory to look for allies.

The China moves would affect the whole world, including Europe. UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves and other leading European finance ministers told me they would work with global partners to ensure the supply of these rare earth materials.

Reeves pointed to work with Canada especially on developing alternative supply chains. The US is now reopening mines, and refining facilities. Chinese dominance here is decades in the making, however.

At times like this, it is also fair to say there is some divergence between the public words of diplomacy and what is being said in private.

There was frustration and bafflement behind the scenes directed at the US for having liberally sprayed tariffs in all directions while asking the world to focus on China's trade distortions.

"It's hard to tell friend from foe," said one G20 finance minister.

"The Americans are basically trying to corral the rest of the world against China, using everything as leverage against China," one senior G7 official told me.

• What tariffs has Trump announced and why?
• India's exports to US plunge as tariffs bite

This climate of suspicion breeds uncertainty and the world's smaller central banks are ploughing their money into the so-called safe haven of gold for a reason, sending it to new records.

Back at the US Treasury Cash Room, where there is a lot of gold detail in the seven types of marble, there is another telling statement from US Treasury Secretary Bessent.

He sees the US going through a 1990s-style high-tech productivity boom. "That's the most analogous period to what we're seeing now."

In the coming weeks he will help choose the new chair of the US Federal Reserve in the mould of 1990s Alan Greenspan, who famously accommodated the run-up of the dotcom boom with low interest rates, considered by some to have contributed to the financial crash. Bessent has been rereading Greenspan's biography Maestro.

But in the 1990s the world's second biggest economy was not taking steps to interrupt the new tech supply chain and there was not a constantly rolling threat of more tariffs from China and the US.

These are centrifugal forces shaping the uneasy calm in the world economy.

The Road Runner moment has happened. Like the cartoon character, having headed off the edge of a cliff, global trade is defying gravity momentarily but the running has kept going, and even sped up.

The world's finance ministers on their field trip to Washington have had to assume the world economy will muddle through this.

It doesn't mean it will.

China's top leaders are gathering in Beijing this week to decide on the country's key goals and aspirations for the rest of the decade.

Every year or so, the country's highest political body, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, convenes for a week of meetings, also known as a Plenum.

What it decides at this one will eventually form the basis of China's next Five Year Plan - the blueprint that the world's second largest economy will follow between 2026 and 2030.

The full plan won't come until next year, but officials are likely to hint at its contents on Wednesday and have previously given more details within a week of that.

"Western policy works on election cycles, but Chinese policy making operates on planning cycles," says Neil Thomas, a fellow in Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

"Five Year Plans spell out what China wants to achieve, signal the direction the leadership wants to go in and move the resources of the state towards these predefined conclusions," he adds.

On the surface, the idea of hundreds of suited bureaucrats shaking hands and drawing up plans may appear drab - but history tells us that what they decide often has huge repercussions for the world.

Here are three times China's Five Year Plan reshaped the global economy.

1981-84: "Reform and Opening Up"

Pinpointing exactly when China began its journey to become an economic powerhouse is difficult, but many in the Party like to say it was on 18 December 1978.

For nearly three decades, China's economy had been rigidly controlled by the state. But Soviet-style central planning had failed to lift prosperity and many were still struggling in poverty.

The country was still recovering from Mao Zedong's devastating rule. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution - campaigns led by Communist China's founder to reshape the nation's economy and society - resulted in millions of deaths.

Speaking at the 11th Committee's Third Plenum in Beijing, the country's new leader Deng Xiaoping declared that it was time to embrace some elements of the free market.

His policy of "reform and opening up" became integral to the next Five Year Plan, which began in 1981.

The creation of free trading Special Economic Zones - and the foreign investment they attracted - transformed the lives of people in China.

According to Mr Thomas, the aims of that Five Year Plan could not have been achieved more emphatically.

"China today is beyond the wildest dreams of people in the 1970s," he says. "In terms of restoring national pride as well as establishing its place amongst the great powers of the world," he says.

But it also fundamentally reshaped the global economy. By the 21st Century, millions of western manufacturing jobs had been outsourced to new factories in China's coastal regions.

Economists have called this "the China shock" and it's been one of the driving forces behind the rise of populist parties in former industrial parts of Europe and the United States.

For example, Donald Trump's economic policies - his tariffs and trade wars - are designed to bring back the American manufacturing jobs lost to China over the previous few decades.

2011-15: "Strategic emerging industries"

China's status as the workshop of the world was cemented once it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. But at the turn of the century, the Communist Party leadership was already planning its next move.

It was wary of China falling into the so-called "middle income trap". This happens when an upwardly mobile country can't offer ultra-low wages anymore, but at the same time doesn't have the innovative capacity to create the high-end goods and services of an advanced economy.

So instead of just cheap manufacturing, China needed to find what it called "strategic emerging industries" - a term first officially used in 2010. For China's leaders, this meant green technology, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels.

As climate change became increasingly important in Western politics, China mobilised an unprecedented amount of resources into these new industries.

Today, China is not only the undisputed world leader in renewables and EVs, it also has a near monopoly over the rare earth supply chains needed to build them.

China's stranglehold on these key resources - which are also crucial to chip-making and artificial intelligence (AI) - now puts it in a powerful position globally.

So much so that Beijing's recent move to tighten export controls on rare earths was labelled by Trump as an attempt to "hold the world captive".

Although "strategic emerging forces" was enshrined in the next Five Year Plan in 2011, green technology had been identified as a potential engine of growth and geopolitical power by China's then leader Hu Jintao in the early 2000s.

"This desire for China to be more self-reliant in its economy, in its technology, in its freedom of action, goes back a long way - it is part of the fibre of Chinese Communist Party ideology," explains Neil Thomas.

2021-2025: "High quality development"

This may explain why China's Five Year Plans more recently have turned their attention to "high quality development", formally introduced by Xi Jinping in 2017.

This means challenging American dominance in technology and putting China at the forefront of the sector.

Domestic success stories such as the video sharing app TikTok, telecommunications giant Huawei and even DeepSeek, the AI model, are all testament to China's technological boom this century.

But western countries increasingly see this as a threat to their national security. The subsequent bans or attempted bans on popular Chinese technology have affected millions of internet users around the world and have sparked bitter diplomatic rows.

Until now, China has powered its tech success using American innovation, such as Nvidia's advanced semiconductors.

Given their sale to China has now been blocked by Washington, expect "high quality development" to morph into "new quality productive forces" - a fresh slogan introduced by Xi in 2023, which tilts the focus more towards domestic pride and national security.

This means putting China at the cutting edge of chip-making, computing and AI - not reliant on Western technology and immune to embargoes.

Self-sufficiency in all areas, especially at the very top end of innovation, is likely to be one of the central tenets of the next Five Year Plan.

"National security and technological independence are now the defining mission of China's economic policy," Mr Thomas explains.

"Again, it goes back to that nationalist project that underpins communism in China, to ensure it never again is dominated by foreign countries".

Virginia Giuffre says she feared she might "die a sex slave" at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and his circle, her posthumous memoir reveals.

The BBC has obtained a full copy of Nobody's Girl, written by the prominent accuser of convicted sex offender Epstein ahead of its publication on Tuesday, almost six months after she took her own life.

In the memoir, Ms Giuffre also says she had sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions, including once with Epstein and approximately eight other young women.

Prince Andrew, who reached a financial settlement with Ms Giuffre in 2022, has always denied any wrongdoing.

The memoir, which the BBC bought from a book store in central London days before its official release date, paints a picture of a web of rich and powerful people abusing young women.

At the centre of the abuse was Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.

Ms Giuffre says that even decades later, she remembers how much she feared them both.

Much of the book makes for extremely harrowing reading, as Ms Giuffre details the sadistic abuse that Epstein put her through.

She says Epstein subjected her to sadomasochistic sex which caused her "so much pain that I prayed I would black out".

On Friday, Prince Andrew announced that he was voluntarily deciding not to use his titles and giving up membership of the Order of the Garter - the oldest and most senior order of chivalry in Britain.

He will no longer use his Duke of York title, an honour received from his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.

In his statement, he said: "I vigorously deny the accusations against me."

However the new book, written by Ms Giuffre and ghostwriter Amy Wallace, causes further embarrassment for the prince.

In the memoir, Ms Giuffre says she first met Prince Andrew in March 2001.

She writes that Maxwell woke her up and told her it was going to be a "special day" and that "just like Cinderella" she was going to meet a "handsome prince".

She says that when she met Prince Andrew later that day, Maxwell told him to guess her age.

The prince, who was then 41, "guessed correctly: seventeen", Ms Giuffre said. "My daughters are just a little younger than you," she recalls him saying.

That night, she says she attended London's Tramp nightclub with Prince Andrew, Epstein and Maxwell, where she says the prince "sweated profusely".

In a car on the way back to Maxwell's house afterwards, Ms Giuffre writes that Maxwell told her: "When we get home, you are to do for him what you do for Jeffrey."

She wrote that back at the house they had sex.

"He was friendly enough, but still entitled - as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright," she says.

"The next morning, it was clear that Maxwell had conferred with her royal chum because she told me: 'You did well. The prince had fun.'"

Ms Giuffre writes that she "didn't feel so great", adding: "Soon, Epstein would give me $15,000 for servicing the man the tabloids called 'Randy Andy' - a lot of money."

Ms Giuffre claims she had sex for a second time with the prince around a month later at Epstein's townhouse in New York.

She says the third occasion was on Epstein's island as part of what Ms Giuffre called "an orgy".

She writes that she said in a sworn declaration in 2015 that she was "around 18".

"Epstein, Andy, and approximately eight other young girls and I had sex together," she says.

"The other girls all appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn't really speak English.

"Epstein laughed about how they couldn't really communicate, saying they are the easiest girls to get along with."

Later in the book, Ms Giuffre touches on her 2022 out-of-court settlement with Prince Andrew after she brought a civil case against him.

"I agreed to a one-year gag order, which seemed important to the prince because it ensured his mother's Platinum Jubilee would not be tarnished any more than it already had been," she writes.

While Ms Giuffre's alleged interactions with Prince Andrew have been widely reported by the British press, the book's content is wider in scope - littered with sinister details of Epstein's sex trafficking.

The girls were required to look "childlike", Ms Giuffre says, and her childhood eating disorder was "only encouraged" under Epstein's roof.

"In my years with them, they lent me out to scores of wealthy, powerful people," she writes.

"I was habitually used and humiliated - and in some instances, choked, beaten, and bloodied.

"I believed that I might die a sex slave."

Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a person under the age of 18. He died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

On Sunday, the Metropolitan Police said it was "actively" looking into media reports that Prince Andrew tried to obtain personal information about Ms Giuffre through his police protection officer (PPO).

According to the Mail on Sunday, the prince asked the officer to investigate Ms Giuffre just before the newspaper published a photo in February 2011 of her first meeting with the prince.

A royal source told the BBC there are currently no plans for the removal of the prince title that Andrew was born with.

"The headlines are taking a lot of oxygen out of the royal room," they added, referring to press about Prince Andrew diverting attention away from King Charles's engagements.

In 2019, the prince repeatedly told BBC Newsnight that he did not remember meeting Ms Giuffre "at all" and that they "never had any sort of sexual contact."

Buckingham Palace has not commented.

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New vocational courses called V-levels will be rolled out for 16-year-olds under government plans to simplify a "confusing landscape" of qualifications in England.

They are set to replace Level 3 BTecs and other post-16 technical qualifications.

Ministers also plan to reduce the number of teenagers resitting maths and English GCSEs by introducing an alternative qualification.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association warned that V-levels may not fill the gap left by BTecs.

Ministers are expected to lay out proposals for higher education funding, including university tuition fees, on Monday afternoon.

The government has launched a consultation on its V-level plans, which form part of its post-16 education and skills white paper.

They come after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer stressed the importance of vocational training, announcing a target for two-thirds of young people to go to university or study a technical qualification.

Lola Marshall, 17, hopes to do an apprenticeship after her health and social care extended diploma at Leeds City College, and said there wasn't enough discussion about vocational routes at school.

"Everyone always talked about university and no one ever really helped me decide whether I wanted to do university or an apprenticeship," she said.

It is not yet clear when V-levels will be introduced, how they will be rolled out, or which subjects will be on offer - although the Department for Education (DfE) gave craft and design and media, broadcast and production as examples.

Skills minister Baroness Jacqui Smith said V-levels aimed to simplify options for students.

"There are over 900 courses at the moment that young people have the choice of, and it's confusing," she said.

"[V-levels] will build on what's good about BTecs and other alternative qualifications - the ability to be able to work practically, the concentration on things that are going to lead to employment."

Students will still be able to study A-levels or T-levels after their GCSEs, or start an apprenticeship.

Ministers expect many will want to mix and match between A-levels and V-levels.

T-levels, introduced in 2020, already offer a technical route for students, but the initial findings of a government-commissioned review said they shouldn't be the only option, partly because of their high entry requirements.

Students study one T-level geared towards a specific occupation, whereas they might study three A-levels in different subjects.

Baroness Smith said T-levels therefore suited students who "really know that's what [they] want to do", while V-levels would be better for those who were less sure.

Plans to scrap BTecs have been under way for a few years, and campaigners have stressed the importance of students having an alternative to A-levels and T-levels.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said students must be able to enrol on BTecs and other courses for the next two years.

"While the detail has yet to be established, there is a risk that the new V-levels will not come close to filling the gap that will be left by the removal of applied general qualifications," he said.

David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said V-levels might bring more "clarity and certainty" to further education.

"We've seen before lots of attempts to raise the profile of vocational and technical learning – we've got to hope this time we get it right as a nation," he said.

Baroness Smith also said a new qualification would be introduced as an alternative to GCSE resits, helping students who "too often have been on this demoralising roundabout of taking exams and failing them".

In England, pupils who don't get at least a grade 4 in GCSE English and maths have to continue studying for it alongside their next course, and are expected to resit.

However, the resit pass rate is low and the policy has proved controversial.

The government said offering an alternative would "break down barriers to opportunity", because white working class pupils were twice as likely to need to resit than their better-off classmates.

Its white paper will also propose that teenagers are offered a choice of two "pathways" - one focused on study and one on work - which will set out which qualifications they'll need to achieve their goals.

Ministers are also due to set out plans for the funding of higher education in England, including setting university tuition fees.

Universities have expressed growing concerns about funding pressures after years of frozen tuition fees, with more than four in 10 universities in England believed to be in a financial deficit.

They say income from fees has failed to match rising costs, and there have been fewer international students - who pay higher rates - coming in to help make up the financial shortfall.

Prof Shearer West, vice chancellor of the University of Leeds, welcomed the fact that domestic tuition fees in England and Wales rose to £9,535 this year but hopes to see further change.

"We're being asked to do more research with less money and teach more students with fewer resources," she told the BBC.

"The only way that we can deal with a situation like that is really to cut our costs, which often means that we have to lose staff and you can see that happening across the sector."

Additional reporting by Branwen Jeffreys and Hope Rhodes

This weekend's "No Kings" demonstrations drew an estimated crowd of millions across the US to protest President Donald Trump's policies and his willingness to push the boundaries of presidential authority.

It was a moment for likeminded Democrats, liberals and some anti-Trump Republicans to rally together at a time when the American left has little formal power in national politics.

But where do they go from here?

By most accounts, the turnout at Saturday's events - in major US cities like Chicago, New York, Washington and Los Angeles, as well as hundreds of smaller towns – was higher than expected and surpassed the first "No Kings" rally in June.

Congressional Republicans had warned that the demonstrations would be "anti-American", and some conservative governors had put their law enforcement and National Guard on alert in case of violence.

The massive rallies turned out to be peaceful – a carnival, not carnage. In New York City, there were no protest-related arrests, and the gathering in Washington DC featured families and young children.

"Today all across America in numbers that may eclipse any day of protest in our nation's history, Americans are saying loudly and proudly that we are a free people, we are not a people that can be ruled, our government is not for sale," Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said in his speech to the Washington DC rally.

Just down the street from the No Kings gathering in the nation's capital, the White House responded to the protests with derision.

"Who cares," deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson wrote in response to multiple media inquiries about the marches.

Trump shared several AI-generated videos on his Truth Social website of him wearing a crown, including one where he was flying a jet that dumped what appeared to be human waste on the protesters.

While Republicans may be downplaying the significance of the marches, the scale of the turnout – along with Trump's net negative approval rating in major opinion polls - hints at a Democratic opportunity to rebound from last year's electoral defeats.

The party still has a long way to go, however.

Polls suggest only a third of Americans view it favourably - the lowest for decades - and Democrats are divided over how to mount an effective opposition to Trump when they no longer control either chamber of Congress.

Liberals took to the streets on Saturday for a variety of reasons. Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement, his tariff policies, his government cuts, his foreign policy, his deployment of National Guard in US cities and his norm-breaking use of presidential authority were all frequent topics of concern and outrage.

Some of the frustration was also directed at Democratic leaders.

"We're just taking it on the chin, and we're not speaking out," one march attendee in Washington DC told NBC News on Saturday. "You know, I think we need to throw some more elbows. Unfortunately, the high road doesn't work."

The Democrats have been more combative over the ongoing government shutdown, which is about to enter its fourth week. They have been unwilling to approve a short-term extension of current federal spending without a bipartisan agreement to address health-insurance subsidies for low-income Americans set to expire at the end of the year.

Because of Senate parliamentary rules, Democrats have some power despite being in the minority – and, at least so far, the public seems to be assigning at least as much, if not more, blame for the impasse to Trump and the Republican majority.

But the strategy comes with risks too. The pain from the shutdown – particularly for those in the Democratic coalition – is only going to increase as the weeks go by.

Many federal workers have missed paycheques and are facing financial hardship. Funding is expected to run out for low-income food support. The US judicial system is scaling back its operations. And the Trump administration is using the shutdown to order new cuts to the federal workforce and suspend domestic spending, targeting Democratic states and cities.

The reality is that Democratic leaders in the Senate will ultimately have to find a way out of the crisis. But they may be hard-pressed to reach terms that the protesters who took to the streets on Saturday will find acceptable.

"If we shake hands with President Trump on a deal, we don't want him then next week just firing thousands more people, cancelling economic development projects, cancelling public health funds," Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said on Sunday in an interview on NBC's Meet The Press. "So we are trying to get an agreement that a deal is a deal."

There is a chance the government shutdown will still be happening in early November when voters in some states will head to the ballot box for the first time since last year's presidential contest.

Elections for governor and state legislatures could provide a barometer for whether the anti-Trump sentiment on display at the "No Kings" protests translates into electoral success for Democrats.

Four years ago, a Republican won the governor's race in Virginia, an electoral battleground that has trended left in recent presidential elections, providing an early sign of voter dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden. This time around, the Democrat – former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger – is leading her Republican opponent in the polls.

While Trump lost New Jersey in last year's presidential election, the margin of defeat - less than 6% - was dramatically down from Biden's 16% victory in 2020 and Hillary Clinton's 14% margin in 2017. November's governor's election shows a similarly close race.

At the No Kings rally in Montclair, New Jersey, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin urged attendees to vote in the upcoming election.

"It is one thing to show up at these protests," he said. "And it's another to move the needle and get back some power."

This November's elections will be a test of whether antipathy toward Trump is enough to get left-wing voters to support Democratic candidates.

They are, however, just a prelude to next year's midterm elections, which will decide which party controls both chambers of the US Congress and could provide Democrats with a real check on Trump's power for the last two years of his presidential term.

The priority at Saturday's protests was to unite around a Stop Trump message. Of less concern, at least for the moment, was what Democrats could do once they get back to power.

There have, however, been some indications that cracks remain within the party coalition.

Former Vice-President Kamala Harris's book tour, for example, has regularly been interrupted by pro-Palestinian protestors who object to the Biden administration's Middle East policies. Centrist proposals to focus on economic issues over social policies – including trans rights – have prompted condemnations from many on the left.

Maine, Massachusetts, California and Michigan are likely to have contentious primary battles to determine Democratic nominees in next year's elections – pitting older establishment politicians against younger candidates and liberals against centrists.

These battles could quickly open old political wounds that are hard to heal. In that case, marches alone may not be enough to solve what has ailed the party.

It is the most spectacular robbery at the Louvre museum since the Mona Lisa disappeared in 1911.

And it poses serious questions about levels of security covering French artworks, at a time when they are increasingly being targeted by criminal gangs.

According to France's new interior minister Laurent Nunez, the gang that broke into the Apollo Gallery Sunday morning was clearly professional.

They knew what they wanted, had evidently "cased the joint" in advance, had a brazenly simple but effective modus operandi, and needed no more than seven minutes to take their booty and get away.

In a truck equipped with an elevating platform of the type used by removal companies, they parked on the street outside, raised themselves up to the first floor, then used a disc-cutter to enter through a window.

Inside the richly decorated gallery they made for two display-cases which contain what remains of the French crown jewels.

Most of France's royal regalia was lost or sold after the 1789 Revolution, but some items were saved or bought back. Most of what was in the cases, though, dates from the 19th Century and the two imperial families of Napoleon and his nephew Napoleon III.

According to the authorities, eight items were taken including diadems, necklaces, ear-rings and brooches.

They had belonged to Napoleon's wife the empress Marie-Louise; to his sister-in-law Queen Hortense of Holland; to Queen Marie-Amelie, wife of France's last King Louis-Philippe, who ruled from 1830 to 1848; and to the empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, who ruled from 1852 to 1870.

A crown of the empress Eugénie was left at the scene and is being examined to see if it is damaged.

In a statement the culture ministry said that the alarms had sounded correctly. Five museum staff who were in the gallery or nearby followed protocol by contacting security forces and protecting visitors.

It said the gang had tried to set fire to their vehicle outside but were prevented by the intervention of a museum staff-member.

The heist took place in a gallery just a short walk from some of the world's most famous paintings – such as the Mona Lisa.

But the criminal groups that order heists like this do not target world-famous paintings that cannot ever be displayed or sold. They prefer items that can be converted into cash – and jewels top the list.

However huge their historical and cultural value, crowns and diadems can easily be broken apart and sold in bits. Even large and famous diamonds can be cut. The final sales price might not be what the original artefact was worth, but it will still be considerable.

Two recent museum thefts in France had already alerted the authorities to the growing audacity of art gangs, and a security plan drawn up by the culture ministry is gradually being put into effect across France.

"We are well aware that French museums are vulnerable," said Nunez.

In September thieves took raw gold – in its mineral state – from the Natural History Museum in Paris. The gold was worth about 600,000 euros (£520,000) and will have been easily disposed of on the black market.

In the same month thieves took porcelain worth 6,000,000 euros from a museum in Limoges – a city once famous for its chinaware. The haul could well have been commissioned by a foreign buyer.

The Louvre contains thousands of artworks that are famous around the world, and an equal number of more obscure items that are nonetheless culturally significant.

But in its 230-year history there have been relatively few thefts – largely thanks to the tight security in place.

The most recent disappearance was of a landscape by the 19th Century artist Camille Corot. Le Chemin de Sèvres (The Road to Sèvres) was simply removed from a wall in 1998 when no-one was looking, and has not been seen since.

But by far the most famous theft was the one that took place in 1911, when Leonardo da Vinci's La Joconde – better known now as the Mona Lisa – was taken. The culprit back then was able to roll it up and put it inside his jacket.

It turned out he was an Italian nationalist who wanted the artwork brought back home. It was found in Italy in 1914 and returned to the Louvre.

Unless they have a quick success in catching the thieves, today's investigators are unlikely to be so lucky.

The first aim of the gang will be to disperse the jewels and sell them on. It will not be hard.

The Louvre Museum in Paris has been forced to close while police investigate a brazen heist which reportedly targeted France's priceless crown jewels.

Thieves wielding power tools broke into the world's most visited museum in broad daylight, before escaping on scooters with items said to be of "incalculable" value.

Here is what we know about the crime which has stunned France.

How did the theft unfold?

The theft occurred on Sunday between 09:30 and 09:40 local time, shortly after the museum opened to visitors.

The thieves appear to have used a mechanical ladder to gain access to the Galerie d'Apollon via a balcony close to the River Seine.

Pictures from the scene showed a vehicle-mounted ladder leading up to a first-floor window.

The thieves are then said to have cut through glass panes with an angle grinder or chainsaw to gain access to the museum.

Culture Minister Rachida Dati told French news outlet TF1 that footage of the theft showed the masked robbers entering "calmly" and smashing display cases containing the jewels.

No one was injured in the incident, with Dati saying there been "no violence, very professional".

She described the thieves as seemingly being "experienced" with a well-prepared plan to flee on scooters.

Investigators believe three or four suspects were involved and are studying CCTV footage from the escape route.

The whole raid happened "very, very fast", Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told France Inter radio, and was over in a handful of minutes.

One witness described scenes of "total panic" as the museum was evacuated. Later images showed entrances closed off with metal gates.

What was stolen

French authorities have not confirmed which items were taken but the wing which was targeted houses jewels and riches from France's royal past.

Dati said one item was found outside the museum, apparently having been dropped during the escape. Le Parisien newspaper reported it may have been the crown of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.

The newspaper said the Regent Diamond - the 140-carat centrepiece of the gallery - was not stolen.

BFM reported that the stolen pieces were believed to include jewels belonging to Napoleon III, and that a second cabinet containing other regal treasures may also have been targeted.

Nuñez described the stolen jewels "priceless" and "of immeasurable heritage value".

Have similar thefts happened before?

In 1911, an Italian museum employee was able to make off with the Mona Lisa under his coat after lifting the painting - which was then little-known to the public - straight off the wall of a quiet gallery.

It was recovered after two years and the culprit later said he was motivated by the belief the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece belonged in Italy.

Fewer chances are taken with the Mona Lisa these days: the painting, perhaps the most renowned in the museum's collection, hangs in a high-security glass compartment.

In 1998, the Le Chemin de Sevres - a 19th century painting by Camille Corot - was stolen and has never been found. The incident prompted a massive overhaul of museum security.

There has been a recent spate of thefts targeting French museums.

Last month, thieves broke into the Adrien Dubouche Museum in Limoges and stole porcelain works reputedly worth €9.5m ($11m / £8.25m).

In November 2024, seven items of "great historic and heritage value" were stolen from the Cognacq-Jay Museum in the capital. Five were recovered a few days ago.

The same month, armed robbers raided the Hieron Museum in Burgundy, firing shots before escaping with millions of pounds worth of 20th century artworks.

President Donald Trump has said the US will return two people who survived a strike on what he called a "drug-carrying submarine" to their countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia.

Writing on social media, Trump said two other people were killed in the US strike on the vessel, which he said US intelligence confirmed was "loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics".

The attack on Thursday is at least the sixth US strike on ships in the Caribbean Sea in recent weeks. It is the first time survivors have been reported.

At least 27 people were killed in the prior five boat strikes in the waters off Venezuela, according to figures released by the administration.

The two survivors were rescued by a US military helicopter and then shuttled onto a US warship in the Caribbean, unnamed US officials told US media earlier.

In recent weeks, Trump has ramped up threats against Venezuela's leadership over claims that the country is sending drugs to the US. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has accused Trump of trying to make the South American nation "an American colony".

Trump has defended the ongoing boat attacks, saying they are aimed at stemming the flow of drugs from Latin America into the US, but his government has not provided evidence or details about the identities of the vessels or those on board.

"It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route," Trump said in his Truth Social post on Saturday.

"The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution."

He added that no US military personnel were injured in the attack.

On Friday, the US president had said the submarine targeting the latest attack was "built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs".

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

UN-appointed human rights experts have described the US strikes as "extrajudicial executions".

Trump earlier told reporters that he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, and that he was considering launching attacks on Venezuelan soil.

Narco-subs have become a popular way to transport drugs as they can go largely undetected, and can be sunk after delivery. They are often homemade and constructed using fibreglass and plywood.

The US, as well as other coastal nations, have previously intercepted some of these subs.

It is the most spectacular robbery at the Louvre museum since the Mona Lisa disappeared in 1911.

And it poses serious questions about levels of security covering French artworks, at a time when they are increasingly being targeted by criminal gangs.

According to France's new interior minister Laurent Nunez, the gang that broke into the Apollo Gallery Sunday morning was clearly professional.

They knew what they wanted, had evidently "cased the joint" in advance, had a brazenly simple but effective modus operandi, and needed no more than seven minutes to take their booty and get away.

In a truck equipped with an elevating platform of the type used by removal companies, they parked on the street outside, raised themselves up to the first floor, then used a disc-cutter to enter through a window.

Inside the richly decorated gallery they made for two display-cases which contain what remains of the French crown jewels.

Most of France's royal regalia was lost or sold after the 1789 Revolution, but some items were saved or bought back. Most of what was in the cases, though, dates from the 19th Century and the two imperial families of Napoleon and his nephew Napoleon III.

According to the authorities, eight items were taken including diadems, necklaces, ear-rings and brooches.

They had belonged to Napoleon's wife the empress Marie-Louise; to his sister-in-law Queen Hortense of Holland; to Queen Marie-Amelie, wife of France's last King Louis-Philippe, who ruled from 1830 to 1848; and to the empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, who ruled from 1852 to 1870.

A crown of the empress Eugénie was left at the scene and is being examined to see if it is damaged.

In a statement the culture ministry said that the alarms had sounded correctly. Five museum staff who were in the gallery or nearby followed protocol by contacting security forces and protecting visitors.

It said the gang had tried to set fire to their vehicle outside but were prevented by the intervention of a museum staff-member.

The heist took place in a gallery just a short walk from some of the world's most famous paintings – such as the Mona Lisa.

But the criminal groups that order heists like this do not target world-famous paintings that cannot ever be displayed or sold. They prefer items that can be converted into cash – and jewels top the list.

However huge their historical and cultural value, crowns and diadems can easily be broken apart and sold in bits. Even large and famous diamonds can be cut. The final sales price might not be what the original artefact was worth, but it will still be considerable.

Two recent museum thefts in France had already alerted the authorities to the growing audacity of art gangs, and a security plan drawn up by the culture ministry is gradually being put into effect across France.

"We are well aware that French museums are vulnerable," said Nunez.

In September thieves took raw gold – in its mineral state – from the Natural History Museum in Paris. The gold was worth about 600,000 euros (£520,000) and will have been easily disposed of on the black market.

In the same month thieves took porcelain worth 6,000,000 euros from a museum in Limoges – a city once famous for its chinaware. The haul could well have been commissioned by a foreign buyer.

The Louvre contains thousands of artworks that are famous around the world, and an equal number of more obscure items that are nonetheless culturally significant.

But in its 230-year history there have been relatively few thefts – largely thanks to the tight security in place.

The most recent disappearance was of a landscape by the 19th Century artist Camille Corot. Le Chemin de Sèvres (The Road to Sèvres) was simply removed from a wall in 1998 when no-one was looking, and has not been seen since.

But by far the most famous theft was the one that took place in 1911, when Leonardo da Vinci's La Joconde – better known now as the Mona Lisa – was taken. The culprit back then was able to roll it up and put it inside his jacket.

It turned out he was an Italian nationalist who wanted the artwork brought back home. It was found in Italy in 1914 and returned to the Louvre.

Unless they have a quick success in catching the thieves, today's investigators are unlikely to be so lucky.

The first aim of the gang will be to disperse the jewels and sell them on. It will not be hard.

George Santos is done with politics for now - instead, he wants to use his newfound freedom to make prisons more humane, he told The Washington Post.

The disgraced Republican US Representative from New York was released from prison on Friday after President Donald Trump commuted his seven-year sentence for wire fraud and identity theft.

"There is nothing more that I want to do than to focus and dedicate my entire life to prison reform," Santos said in a Saturday interview with the Post.

Santos, who was booted from Congress in 2023 after a damning ethics report, told the Post that his experience in federal prison was "dehumanising" and "humbling".

Santos had admitted to stealing the identities of 11 people, including his own family members, was released on Friday night, US media reported.

He embellished much about his biography in the run-up to his election to Congress in 2022.

In the 84 days he served in prison, Santos wrote a handful of columns published on The South Shore Press' website.

He has described the prison system as "broken" with "rotting facilities, and administrators who seem incapable or unwilling to correct it". He said a gaping hole in the ceiling exposed "thick black mold" underneath, and that broken air conditioning forced prisoners to endure sweltering heat.

"The building itself is hardly fit for long-term habitation: sheet metal walls, shoddy construction, the look and feel of a temporary warehouse rather than a permanent facility," Santos wrote.

Santos told the Post that he spoke with Trump on Saturday and informed the president of his mission to get involved in prison reform and to "help his administration achieve that in whichever way I can".

It's not clear how exactly Santos intends to work on prison reform, and his lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BBC.

Santos told CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday that he's not interested in running for office again just yet, at least for the next decade.

"I'm all politicked out," he told Bash.

The Bureau of Prisons responded to a request for comment from BBC saying that it could not answer media inquiries due to the ongoing government shutdown.

A contact for the prison Santos was held in, FCI Fairton in New Jersey, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Santos' allegations of poor conditions and mistreatment.

The Louvre Museum in Paris has been closed following a robbery, France's culture minister says.

Rachida Dati wrote on X that the robbery happened on Sunday morning as the museum was opening. She said she was at the site, where police are investigating

The museum confirmed it was closing for the day "for exceptional reasons," without providing further details. Various French media reports say jewellery has been stolen.

The Louvre is the world's most visited museum and houses many famous artworks and other valuable items.

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

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

Green Party leader Zack Polanski has defended his party's proposals for a wealth tax as "tackling the deep inequality in our society".

He told the BBC that at a time when people are "really struggling" it was right to focus on the "super wealthy".

In its general election manifesto last year, the Green Party of England and Wales proposed an annual tax of 1% on assets above £10m and 2% on assets above £1bn.

Critics of the idea have said such a tax would penalise savings and investment, while arguing it could encourage wealthy individuals to leave the country.

In an interview with the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Polanski suggested a wealth tax could raise between £15bn and £25bn a year.

Challenged that other countries which have implemented similar proposals have found they raised much smaller sums, he said: "Whatever you're going to create from a wealth tax, it's ultimately about reducing inequality.

"This isn't about creating public investment, we can do that anyway, we don't need to tax the wealthy to do that. This is ultimately about tackling the deep inequality in our society."

However, he admitted the idea was not even "close to a panacea" and said capital gains tax - which is charged on profits made from the sale of an asset such as a second home or shares - also needed to brought in line with income tax.

"We need to tax unearned wealth as much as we tax earned income," he added.

Pressed over whether lower and middle-income earners would also have to contribute more for better public services, Polanski insisted the focus at the moment should be on the wealthiest.

But he added: "Once we start to move to a better footing as a society, where we have better public infrastructure and services, then I think it is legitimate to say paying tax is something that's actually patriotic, we should be proud of contributing to this country, to making sure we have an NHS that works, that we have public transport that works.

"And, yes, everyone will have to pay for that, but ultimately this is about where is the biggest burden, and that should be on the people with the broadest shoulders."

Polanski was also asked about his position on Nato, after previously suggesting the UK should leave the military alliance.

He told the BBC he did not support withdrawing from Nato "immediately" as "the world is in political turmoil, and we need to make sure our country is defended".

However, he added: "Once we've created an alternative alliance with our European neighbours, we should absolutely be looking at a different way that is focused on peace and diplomacy, rather than on nuclear weapons."

Polanski was elected as leader of the Green Party of England and Wales last month, beating his opponents, MPs Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, by a huge margin.

He campaigned on a platform of "eco-populism", arguing the party needed to be bolder and more radical in its approach.

The party says its membership has surged by 80% since he took over as leader and now stands at more than 126,000.

Polanski said the figures reflected "growing public frustration with the political status quo and a hunger for genuine alternatives".

The party - which won a record four MPs at last year's general election - claims its membership has now overtaken the Conservatives.

The Conservatives do not routinely publish their membership figures.

Some 131,680 members were eligible to vote in last year's Tory leadership election but reports suggest the party's membership has fallen to around 123,000 since then.

Labour, which is the largest political party in the UK on current publicly available figures, has seen its membership drop to 333,235 at the end of last year.

Reform UK did not give a figure for membership in its annual accounts last year, but a ticker on its website says it has more than 260,000 members.

Meanwhile, the number of Liberal Democrat members has almost halved in the last five years to 60,000.

Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to keep up with the inner workings of Westminster and beyond.

President Donald Trump has said the US will return two people who survived a strike on what he called a "drug-carrying submarine" to their countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia.

Writing on social media, Trump said two other people were killed in the US strike on the vessel, which he said US intelligence confirmed was "loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics".

The attack on Thursday is at least the sixth US strike on ships in the Caribbean Sea in recent weeks. It is the first time survivors have been reported.

At least 27 people were killed in the prior five boat strikes in the waters off Venezuela, according to figures released by the administration.

The two survivors were rescued by a US military helicopter and then shuttled onto a US warship in the Caribbean, unnamed US officials told US media earlier.

In recent weeks, Trump has ramped up threats against Venezuela's leadership over claims that the country is sending drugs to the US. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has accused Trump of trying to make the South American nation "an American colony".

Trump has defended the ongoing boat attacks, saying they are aimed at stemming the flow of drugs from Latin America into the US, but his government has not provided evidence or details about the identities of the vessels or those on board.

"It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route," Trump said in his Truth Social post on Saturday.

"The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution."

He added that no US military personnel were injured in the attack.

On Friday, the US president had said the submarine targeting the latest attack was "built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs".

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

UN-appointed human rights experts have described the US strikes as "extrajudicial executions".

Trump earlier told reporters that he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, and that he was considering launching attacks on Venezuelan soil.

Narco-subs have become a popular way to transport drugs as they can go largely undetected, and can be sunk after delivery. They are often homemade and constructed using fibreglass and plywood.

The US, as well as other coastal nations, have previously intercepted some of these subs.

Cricketing stars from Yorkshire and beyond were among the mourners who gathered to say farewell to legendary umpire Dickie Bird at his funeral earlier.

The Barnsley-born son of a miner was 92 when he died "peacefully at home" on 22 September, according to Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

The service at St Mary's Church in Barnsley was attended by former England cricketers Sir Geoffrey Boycott and Michael Vaughan and was followed by a private family-only cremation and a wake at the town hall.

Well-wishers gathered at the statue of Bird on Church Lane where the funeral procession paused for a moment of reflection.

The invited guests also included Yorkshire chair Colin Graves and former director of cricket Martyn Moxon, the sports commentator John Helm and the ex-sports minister Richard Caborn.

Sir Geoffrey and Graves both gave eulogies and a poem by local poet Ian McMillan was read out.

Sir Geoffrey made sure the colourful character of his friend of almost 70 years shined through.

"I first met Dickie Bird when I was 15, at the time I was playing cricket for Hemsworth Grammar School," Sir Geoffrey said to a packed church.

"He called me Gerald for years."

He added: "Surprisingly with all the nerves he had as a batsman, he became a great umpire because he could channel all that nervous energy into good decisions.

"Dickie was refreshingly different. Eccentric but fair. It would be hard to find anyone who didn't like him."

Bird officiated in 66 Tests and 76 one-day internationals, including three World Cup finals, between 1973 and 1996.

He began as a player, batting for Yorkshire and Leicestershire before an injury cut short his career in 1964.

Bird was awarded an MBE in 1986, an OBE in 2012 and the Freedom of Barnsley in 2000.

In 2009 he was immortalised by a statue in Barnsley that depicted him raising his index finger to indicate a batsman was out.

At Yorkshire's home ground, Headingley, he paid for a balcony outside the dressing room for the players to sit and watch the game. Both the balcony and a clock at the ground bear his name.

Former England and Yorkshire cricketer Ryan Sidebottom said Bird was so committed to Yorkshire cricket that he would be on the pitch even for county matches he wasn't umpiring.

He said: "He'd be out looking at the wicket and wandering around. But it looked like he'd just come in from a night out, like an 1980s John Travolta, because he had the full suit on with a large collar and tie and really fancy suits and flared trousers.

"We used to see him regularly with different suits, some naughty suits, some proper naughty suits."

Bowler Sidebottom retired in 2017, after taking more than 1,000 career wickets, and he said Bird "absolutely loved" the sport.

"Great bloke and a lovely man who would do anything for Yorkshire cricket. He just loved Yorkshire, he was so passionate about the game and Yorkshire in general," he said.

And it was love for Yorkshire, and its people, that chair of Yorkshire County Cricket Club Colin Graves remembered at his funeral.

"He had a reputation for not being the first at the bar, but he was a very generous man indeed," he said, adding that almost 1,000 children had been recipients of grants from him.

Among the junior cricketers to have received financial awards from Dickie was Harry Brook - now an England international.

Speaking to the BBC when he turned 90 two years ago, Bird said his secret to a long life had been his love of sport and exercise.

"I run, I go out down to the local football ground here in the local park and I lap around the ground. I feel that's done me good.

"I'd like people, elderly people, if they could to just try and do a few exercises, move your arms, run on the spot, it occupies the brain.

"I'll keep my exercises up as long as I can."

As a young man, he played for Barnsley Cricket Club alongside Boycott and the journalist and broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson.

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North

The Louvre Museum in Paris has been forced to close while police investigate a brazen heist which reportedly targeted France's priceless crown jewels.

Thieves wielding power tools broke into the world's most visited museum in broad daylight, before escaping on scooters with items said to be of "incalculable" value.

Here is what we know about the crime which has stunned France.

How did the theft unfold?

The theft occurred on Sunday between 09:30 and 09:40 local time, shortly after the museum opened to visitors.

The thieves appear to have used a mechanical ladder to gain access to the Galerie d'Apollon via a balcony close to the River Seine.

Pictures from the scene showed a vehicle-mounted ladder leading up to a first-floor window.

The thieves are then said to have cut through glass panes with an angle grinder or chainsaw to gain access to the museum.

Culture Minister Rachida Dati told French news outlet TF1 that footage of the theft showed the masked robbers entering "calmly" and smashing display cases containing the jewels.

No one was injured in the incident, with Dati saying there been "no violence, very professional".

She described the thieves as seemingly being "experienced" with a well-prepared plan to flee on scooters.

Investigators believe three or four suspects were involved and are studying CCTV footage from the escape route.

The whole raid happened "very, very fast", Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told France Inter radio, and was over in a handful of minutes.

One witness described scenes of "total panic" as the museum was evacuated. Later images showed entrances closed off with metal gates.

What was stolen

French authorities have not confirmed which items were taken but the wing which was targeted houses jewels and riches from France's royal past.

Dati said one item was found outside the museum, apparently having been dropped during the escape. Le Parisien newspaper reported it may have been the crown of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.

The newspaper said the Regent Diamond - the 140-carat centrepiece of the gallery - was not stolen.

BFM reported that the stolen pieces were believed to include jewels belonging to Napoleon III, and that a second cabinet containing other regal treasures may also have been targeted.

Nuñez described the stolen jewels "priceless" and "of immeasurable heritage value".

Have similar thefts happened before?

In 1911, an Italian museum employee was able to make off with the Mona Lisa under his coat after lifting the painting - which was then little-known to the public - straight off the wall of a quiet gallery.

It was recovered after two years and the culprit later said he was motivated by the belief the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece belonged in Italy.

Fewer chances are taken with the Mona Lisa these days: the painting, perhaps the most renowned in the museum's collection, hangs in a high-security glass compartment.

In 1998, the Le Chemin de Sevres - a 19th century painting by Camille Corot - was stolen and has never been found. The incident prompted a massive overhaul of museum security.

There has been a recent spate of thefts targeting French museums.

Last month, thieves broke into the Adrien Dubouche Museum in Limoges and stole porcelain works reputedly worth €9.5m ($11m / £8.25m).

In November 2024, seven items of "great historic and heritage value" were stolen from the Cognacq-Jay Museum in the capital. Five were recovered a few days ago.

The same month, armed robbers raided the Hieron Museum in Burgundy, firing shots before escaping with millions of pounds worth of 20th century artworks.