An Algerian sex offender who was mistakenly released from prison has been arrested by police.

Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was arrested after being spotted by a member of the public in Islington, London just before 11:30 GMT on Friday.

He had been let out of HMP Wandsworth in south London on 29 October. Police said they were not told about the mistake until Tuesday 4 November.

He was convicted of indecent exposure in November 2024, relating to an incident in March of that year.

He was given an 18-month community order and placed on the sex offenders' register for five years.

The Metropolitan Police said he was spotted by a member of the public near Capital City College on Blackstock Road at 11:23.

Officers responded "immediately" and he was arrested at 11:30, the force added.

He was arrested for being unlawfully at large and on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in relation to a previous incident.

He is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visitor's visa in 2019, but overstayed that and was in the initial stages of the deportation process.

He was released the day after being found not guilty of breaching the sex offenders' register's requirements - but he was still facing other charges and should have remained in custody.

The prison officers' representatives said a clerical error meant there was no warrant from the court to hold him, and he was let go.

It followed a series of prosecutions and court appearances dating back two years.

Kaddour-Cherif was one of two men separately released by mistake from Wandsworth Prison in the past week.

William Smith handed himself back in on Thursday - after being let go on Monday, the same day he had been sentenced to prison.

Their releases came just weeks after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu, who arrived in the UK on a small boat, was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford in Essex in late October.

Kaddour-Cherif was found just a three minute walk from where Kebatu was re-arrested on 26 October.

In a statement after Friday's arrest, Justice Secretary David Lammy said: "We inherited a prison system in crisis and I'm appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing.

"I'm determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.

"That is why I have ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures, and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons."

Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said Kaddour-Cherif was "just the tip of the iceberg".

He said "immediate action" was needed, "because the British people are being put at risk".

A former British soldier is facing extradition to Kenya in connection with the alleged murder of a 21-year-old woman there in 2012.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said Robert James Purkiss was arrested in Tidworth, Wiltshire on 6 November and appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday.

He was arrested by specialist officers from the NCA's National Extradition Unit in connection with the killing of Agnes Manjiru after a warrant was issued in September, the agency added.

Mr Purkiss, 38, told the court he intended to contest the extradition and was remanded into custody ahead of his next appearance at the same court on 14 November.

His lawyers told the court that he "vehemently denies" murder.

Ms Wanjiru's body was discovered in a septic tank near a hotel in the town of Nanyuki, about 124 miles (200km) north of Nairobi, three months after she had gone missing on 31 March 2012. She had a five-month-old baby at the time.

Her body was found near a British army training camp. On the night she was killed, she had reportedly been at a bar with friends where British soldiers were also present.

Ms Wanjiru's niece, Esther Njoki, met the UK's defence minister last month in order to push for Mr Purkiss's extradition.

In a statement issued through Leigh Day, the lawyers acting for Ms Wanjiru's family, on Friday Ms Njoki said: "My family is incredibly relieved to hear that the suspect in my aunt's case has been arrested.

"We have waited so many years for this moment which marks an important step towards finally obtaining justice for our beloved Agnes."

Leigh Day partner Tessa Gregory said: "This is a huge moment for our client and her family who have been fighting for over a decade to obtain justice for Agnes.

"We hope the UK and Kenyan authorities will now work together to ensure that the suspect can face trial in Kenya as quickly as possible."

Ms Wanjiru's family has long accused the British army of covering up her death and the Kenyan authorities of failing to properly investigate the case at the time.

An inquest into her death was opened in 2018 following pressure from Ms Wanjiru's family, as well as Kenyan rights groups and feminists.

In 2019, it concluded that Ms Wanjiru had been unlawfully killed by one or two British soldiers and that she had suffered stab wounds to the chest and abdomen.

Later in 2021, a Sunday Times investigation reported that a British soldier had confessed to colleagues that he killed Ms Wanjiru. The soldier left the army after the incident and reportedly continued to live in the UK.

In 2024, the army announced it was launching an internal review into the conduct of British soldiers in Kenya, including in Nanyuki.

It found 35 suspected cases of soldiers having engaged in sexual exploitation and abuse, including transactional sex, with local women - nine of these being after the army officially banned such conduct in 2022.

Jeremy Corbyn's new left-wing party is in a stand-off over £800,000 raised by Zarah Sultana, who is meant to be founding the party with him.

The money was raised when Sultana launched an unauthorised membership scheme for people wanting to join the group currently operating the name Your Party.

Senior figures have accused her of withholding the funds despite publicly agreeing to transfer the money.

A spokesperson for Sultana said she "is in the process of transferring all funds and data" but was conducting "essential due diligence as part of this process".

But the delay has sparked anger among YourParty insiders, who say the funds are essential for its founding conference later this month. A source in the party said it would likely be "forced to reduce delegate numbers" at the event.

The problems stem from a schism in the party caused when Sultana launched a membership portal through its official email account, taking payment and data from an alleged 20,000 people.

The money was held by MoU, a company set up in April to hold donations for the fledgling movement.

Corbyn branded the emails "unauthorised" and urged supporters to cancel direct debits.

The membership portal was later replaced, but not before the dispute escalated into legal threats and accusations of a "sexist boys' club".

The pair have since reconciled.

The plan had been to transfer all the money and data from MoU to Your Party after it was registered with the Electoral Commission on 30 September, then wind up the company.

But the money, believed to be around £800,000, has not yet been transferred.

Last week, the founding board of MoU, which included former Labour mayor of North of Tyne Combined Authority Jamie Driscoll, resigned en masse - making Sultana the sole director.

In a joint resignation statement, the three directors insisted they wanted to transfer the funds but Your Party officials had ignored questions about governance and legal liabilities.

Your Party officials have dismissed MoU's complaints as irrelevant and accused it of shifting the goalposts. Officials claimed they sent multiple proposals to move the funds, but were ignored by MoU.

A Your Party spokesman said "We are focused on delivering a successful founding conference for our members.

"While this task is made considerably harder by the continued retention of Your Party funds by MOU Operations Ltd, we will not allow anything or anyone to stop this party from going ahead.

"Working-class people need a party which stands up for them."

A spokesman for Sultana, Sultana, a co-director of Your Party, said: "Zarah is in the process of transferring all funds and data to Your Party, as she has already made clear publicly.

"Obviously, she has a duty to conduct essential due diligence as part of this process."

The row is the latest twist in a turbulent start for the party, which has attracted tens of thousands of members but been dogged by internal disputes over leadership and even the party's name.

Sultana has pushed for the party to be called The Left Party, while Corbyn hinted the name Your Party could stay.

Members will vote on the official name at a founding conference in Liverpool on 29 29 November.

Despite high-profile clashes, Sultana told the BBC the party was a "40-year project" aimed at "running" the government.

Sultana said she hopes to co-lead the new party with Corbyn, but will "throw her hat in the ring" if members opt for a single leader when the party constitution is agreed at conference.

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"Here we go again."

When Grand Theft Auto 6 was delayed on Thursday, the famous quote from the series perfectly captured the feelings of many video game fans.

Resignation, frustration, déjà vu.

It's the second time maker Rockstar Games has told players they'll have to wait even longer for what is likely to be one of the biggest entertainment releases ever.

The notoriously perfectionist developer has a history of holding on to its blockbusters until it's happy with them, so the news wasn't a complete surprise.

But it has got millions asking what's taking so long, and why.

A timeline

Rockstar Games officially confirmed it was working on GTA 6 in February 2022 and an initial trailer, released almost 18 months later, said it would come out in 2025.

It also revealed that the game features two protagonists - couple Jason and Lucia - and takes place in Leonida, a fictional US state based on Florida.

Rockstar later announced the game had been pushed back, providing an exact date of 26 May 2026.

This got fans excited, especially when some realised it was the date of Bonnie and Clyde's funeral.

The famous outlaw lovers are thought to have provided inspiration for GTA 6's lead characters, and the timing seemed too perfect to pass up.

But in the end, it was. The game has received another delay and a new release date of 19 November 2026.

What's taking so long?

Even Grand Theft Auto is not immune from factors that affect any company making a modern blockbuster video game.

Development has become more expensive, more complex, and the gap between big releases has been widening.

But there are some challenges unique to Rockstar.

The first is hype.

Both of GTA 6's trailers have smashed YouTube viewership records, and it regularly tops lists of the public's most-anticipated games.

Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive, has said that each new release from the developer needs to wow players.

Rockstar is known for breaking new ground with its games, and its last big release, the western adventure Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR 2), helped to bolster that reputation

It is still widely considered a benchmark for open-world video games due to its depth and obsessive attention to detail, despite coming out in 2018.

The studio's impressive track record is attributed to its famously high standards which, in turn, creates ever-higher expectations for its games.

Maintaining its rep is something Rockstar appears to take seriously - both RDR 2 and 2013's GTA 5 were delayed twice.

And when Mr Zelnick was quizzed on GTA 6's recent delay at a meeting with investors this week, he told them those working on the game were "seeking perfection".

A money-making machine

Another unique factor in Rockstar's case is the continued success of its existing library.

GTA 5 is the second best-selling game of all time, and continues to rack up sales 13 years after release.

It sold 730,000 copies in the UK alone last year, according to the Entertainment Retail Association, while RDR 2 sold 350,000 copies in the same period.

That put both games in 2024's top ten for video game sales.

And then there's GTA Online, the wildly successful multiplayer mode that continues to rank among the world's most-played games every month.

It's been credited with bringing in a big chunk of the $8.9bn (£6.7bn) the series has reportedly made since the release of GTA 5.

Its sequel is expected to be one of the most expensive video games of all time, but Rockstar is still making money from its older titles.

However, Take Two said this week that it had seen an expected decline in GTA Online's numbers.

Experts have previously told BBC Newsbeat that the true success of GTA 6 will be measured by how well it manages to lure current players over to its own online mode.

Will GTA 6 get delayed again?

Where GTA is concerned, there are no guarantees.

Rockstar has previously been accused of forcing employees into "crunch", or mandatory overtime, in order to hit release dates and deadlines.

The practice, which has been employed by other big game developers, has been heavily criticised for keeping workers away from their families and driving them to exhaustion.

Rockstar said at the time no-one was forced to work extra hours but it was always looking at methods to improve the ways it worked.

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who published in-depth reports on RDR 2's development, said there appears to be a "real desire" from studio management to avoid crunch on GTA 6.

Earlier this week, 30 employees who were sacked by Rockstar accused it of trying to prevent them from unionising.

The company denied this and accused the workers of committing gross misconduct by sharing confidential information - something the IWGB Game Workers' union has rejected.

It is unlikely that the sackings are directly related to the recent delay, but the loss of experienced staff could have an impact on the game's development.

For now, most fans seem happy to wait a little longer for what many of them expect to be the "game of the century".

Whether their patience will pay off, or be wasted, is in the hands of Rockstar.

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

European Union naval forces have rescued 24 sailors from a Maltese-flagged oil tanker that was attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia.

The Hellas Aphrodite, carrying petrol from India to South Africa, was seized on Thursday when armed pirates opened fire with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades before boarding the vessel.

The crew locked themselves inside a fortified citadel while the attackers took control of the ship.

A Spanish warship, the ESPS Victoria, operating under the EU's anti-piracy mission Operation Atalanta, reached the tanker on Friday afternoon. Special forces boarded the vessel and found all 24 crew members unharmed.

"The crew is safe and no injuries have been reported. Throughout the incident, they remained in the citadel in direct contact with Atalanta," the EU mission said, adding that a "show of force" had prompted the pirates to abandon the ship before the warship arrived.

It added that the threat risk in the area "remains critical" as the pirates are still in the area.

The rescue operation involved a helicopter, drone and surveillance aircraft. Just hours earlier, another ship in the same area was approached by a small speedboat but managed to evade it.

It is the latest in a spate of attacks that have created concern about a resurgence of piracy in the area.

Such activity had declined when international naval patrols and security measures were introduced after peaking more than a decade ago.

However, attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea, which have been carried out for the past two years, have led vessels to be diverted through East Africa's Indian Ocean - creating new opportunities for Somali gangs.

There were seven reported incidents of piracy that took place off the coast of Somalia last year, according to the International Maritime Bureau - including three hijackings. It reported only one incident of piracy in 2023.

Kim Kardashian has poked fun at critics who savaged her new legal TV drama by posting screen shots of fans deciding to tune in after seeing the terrible reviews.

She plays a divorce lawyer in Disney+ series All's Fair, which was described as "so awful, it feels almost contemptuous" by the Guardian, while the Times declared that it "may be the worst TV drama ever".

She asked her 354 million Instagram followers: "Have you tuned in to the most critically acclaimed show of the year!?!?!? All's Fair streaming now."

The show is currently scoring just 5% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, although it also has a more respectable 66% score from audiences.

'Torn apart'

Kardashian's shared a selection of fans' posts about the show, including one joking about critics realising "their reviews of All's Fair ended up making peple watch and love the show".

The series co-stars Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Niecy Nash and Teyana Taylor.

Another fan comment, highlighting the line-up, said All's Fair "dares to ask the question 'does a show need to be good?' and the answer is no, it doesn't".

The comment added: "We have legendary actresses here giving the worst performances of their careers, it takes a special kind of talent to pull that inability of them. Amazeballs."

• Kim Kardashian tells BBC about leading role in new Disney+ show
• Is All's Fair really the 'worst TV drama ever'?

This is Kardashian's second foray into acting after her casting in 2023's 12th season of American Horror Story, in which she appeared as a publicist, receiving mostly positive reviews.

All's Fair reunites the star with American Horror Story showrunner Ryan Murphy, who was also behind hit series such as Glee and Pose.

The Huffington Post said the show was "torn apart" by critics, with some giving it zero out of five. Its writer Daniel Welsh said: "The glossy sheen of the show and its stacked cast might make you think it's verging on 'so bad it's good' territory, but it's really just a boring dud."

Other critics include Alison Herman, writing in Variety that it is a "clumsy, condescending take on rah-rah girlboss feminism", while the Hollywood Reporter's Angie Han called Kardashian an "appropriately wooden lead for Ryan Murphy's empty, unforgivably dull drama".

But undeterred, the reality star and businesswoman shared fan reactions including one who said they "immediately pressed play" after seeing a post saying the show had debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a paltry 0%.

She also included a BBC News Instagram post quoting the Daily Telegraph's Ed Power, who wrote: "Ryan Murphy is the high priest of tacky tasteless television, and this year he has outdone himself."

Another fan said: "Some of the worst acting I've ever seen in my life alongside the most predictable storylines and the most ridulous styling. I'm obsessed. I need 14 seasons."

Kardashian ended her post with what is arguably the last laugh.

She shared a screenshot from Disney Hulu, stating that the show is curently the most watched title on Disney+ around the world, ranking first in 28 countries including the US.

For years, Julia Wandelt bombarded Madeleine McCann's parents and siblings with phone calls and messages on WhatsApp and Instagram.

She even turned up on the family's doorstep, posting a letter through their door beginning "Dear Mum".

Wandelt believed she could be Kate and Gerry McCann's missing daughter and spent more than two years trying to gather evidence to reinforce this idea.

DNA tests have proved she is not Madeleine, the three-year-old who disappeared while on a family holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.

Wandelt has now been found guilty of harassing the McCann family but not guilty of stalking. Her co-accused Karen Spragg - who the prosecution called a conspiracy theorist - was cleared.

Wandelt's actions, the trial at Leicester Crown Court heard, were cruel and unforgiving.

Wandelt, the court heard, began "telling anyone who would listen" she was Madeleine McCann in June 2022.

She claimed she had been abducted and transported to Poland. She amassed a number of supporters on social media, would go on to contact 23 different organisations in the UK, Poland, and Portugal, including police and Interpol, missing persons charities and the Find Madeleine website.

Wandelt then began to investigate ways of contacting the McCann family, the trial heard.

She rang the switchboard of the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust claiming to be Madeleine and asked to be put through to Glenfield Hospital, where Mr and Mrs McCann worked.

In a call lasting several minutes, she ended up speaking to the trust's communications manager - telling her she thought she was Madeleine.

The contents of the call were passed on to Operation Grange.

In January 2023, Wandelt got in touch with a Polish charity that helps with historical missing persons cases.

She first said she was a missing German girl, called Inga Gehricke, then Acacia Bishop - a baby from Utah in the US - and finally that she was Madeleine.

By now, media attention began to garner around Wandelt's claims on social media. The court heard Fia Johansson, an American woman, contacted Wandelt in February 2023 after she went public with her claims.

Jurors heard the pair had a WhatsApp phone call before they both flew out to Los Angeles.

Wandelt said Miss Johansson organised interviews for her and she ended up appearing on the Dr Phil show, hosted by Phil McGraw - one of the top chat show hosts in the US - in March 2023. She was unpaid from this appearance.

Wandelt later contacted Mr McCann after finding his work email in June 2023. One email read: "I could be your daughter, it's possible I'm her."

Wandelt then turned her attention to Madeleine's sister Amelie, who was at university, messaging her dozens of times on Instagram.

She told Amelie she had memories of them playing in the McCanns' garden and that she was her "only hope".

"Please don't block me, I never lied about anything," she said in another message.

The contact with Madeleine's sister ended at the start of January 2024, when Wandelt again began targeting Madeleine's mother.

Mr Duck KC, for the prosecution, said Wandelt obtained Mrs McCann's phone number in April 2024 from Portuguese police files published online.

The court heard she contacted Mrs McCann on 60 occasions but did not receive a response. In one message, Wandelt asked her to take a DNA test.

In a voicemail, Wandelt said: "I don't want any money, I just want to talk to you... don't give up on your daughter... call me, please."

The prosecution said Wandelt had been "rebuffed on many hundreds of occasions".

Mrs McCann reported Wandelt to officers working within the Operation Grange investigation. But she did not stop.

In May 2024, Wandelt decided to travel from Poland to the village of Rothley, in Leicestershire, to attend a vigil in an attempt to meet the McCann family. Until this point, her attempts to contact the family had been via phone or social media.

The court heard the McCanns were not present for the vigil, but Wandelt approached the village priest and Mrs McCann's aunt and handed a letter to them.

But before returning to Poland, Wandelt visited Charing Cross police station in London and told officers she was Madeleine.

A DNA sample was taken as a precaution, but it was destroyed after an officer made contact with Operation Grange and discovered that there was no prospect of Wandelt being who she claimed to be.

An officer from the investigation was instead sent to speak to her and contacted Wandelt the following month, telling her she risked being arrested. She told the officer she would not give up.

The court heard Mrs Spragg reached out to Wandelt after she saw her appear on a YouTube broadcast in September 2024.

The prosecution said Mrs Spragg was a "forthright supporter of the conspiracy theory" that Madeleine's parents were responsible for her disappearance despite "unequivocal evidence to the contrary".

'Causing distress'

Messages between the pair in November 2024 show Wandelt asking about getting DNA from the McCanns. Mrs Spragg replies to say the pair should "go through their bins".

It was from this contact that Wandelt arranged to meet Mrs Spragg in person.

Wandelt flew into East Midlands Airport and the pair travelled to Birstall, where they checked into a hotel.

They then travelled to Rothley where they waited in Mrs Spragg's car with the lights out.

The trial heard Mrs McCann was confronted by Wandelt with a demand for a DNA test. She told the pair "they were causing distress and should leave the property".

As Mrs McCann tried to get into her home, Wandelt "attempted to stop her closing the door".

A letter from Wandelt, beginning "Dear Mum", was posted through the McCanns' front door the next day.

Following a failed attempt to contact Mrs McCann again via WhatsApp, the prosecution said the defendants continued to make plans for Wandelt to return to the UK.

The two women were finally arrested at Bristol Airport on 19 February 2025.

Wandelt was detained after getting off a flight, while Mrs Spragg had been waiting in a car park nearby and was arrested after sending anxious messages inquiring about the whereabouts of her co-accused.

Wandelt denied any intention to harm the McCanns.

Results of the DNA test - taken by Wandelt after she was arrested at Bristol Airport in February - "conclusively proved" she is not Madeleine.

Jurors were told police contacted the defendant about the DNA test on 1 April. Wandelt said she felt this was "disrespectful" as it was April Fool's Day, knowing how long she had been waiting.

Mr Duck KC told the jury Wandelt was "capable of being incredibly manipulative". He said her actions towards the McCanns had been "cruel and unforgiving".

Wandelt, 24, of Lubin, Poland, who has been remanded in custody since February, was sentenced to six months in prison.

Due to her time on remand, she will leave prison but was given a restraining order against the McCann family. Her phones will be forfeited and destroyed as part of her restraining order.

The court was also told Wandelt is likely to be deported following the conclusion of her trial.

Mrs Spragg was acquitted, though the judge Mrs Justice Cutts, also granted a restraining order against her, which bans her from contacting the McCanns for five years.

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Tesla boss Elon Musk has been one of the world's richest people for several years now, and that wealth recently went stratospheric when he became the first half-trillionaire.

Despite this, Musk has insisted he leads a largely unglamorous lifestyle. He said in 2021 that he lived in a Texas home valued at $50,000 (£38,000).

His former partner Grimes, with whom he has two children, told Vanity Fair in 2022 that he does not live the extravagant life of excess luxury many assume.

"Bro does not live like a billionaire. Bro lives at times below the poverty line," she told the magazine. Once, she said, he refused to buy a new mattress, despite her side having a hole in it.

While his day-to-day living quarters may not be as lavish as one might expect, he is known to have a love of unique cars, including one that can morph into a submarine. He also has a private jet collection, worth many millions of dollars.

And then there was that small splurge back in 2022, when he bought Twitter for a casual $44bn.

The luxury mansions - that he sold

Musk once had an impressive real-estate portfolio. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019 that he had spent $100m on seven houses in about seven years - most of them a stone's throw from each other in the prestigious neighbourhood of Bel-Air, California.

Collectively, the properties boasted swimming pools, a tennis court, wine cellar, private library and a ballroom. One was a ranch house once owned by legendary Willy Wonka actor Gene Wilder.

But in 2020, Musk had a change of heart - tweeting that he would be "selling almost all physical possessions" and "will own no house".

"Don't need the cash. Devoting myself to Mars and Earth. Possession just weigh you down," he wrote.

There was one stipulation - that Gene Wilder's house, "cannot be torn down or lose any [of] its soul".

He did indeed sell the three-bedroom property - to Wilder's nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, after giving him a multi-million dollar loan to buy it. But in June 2025, Musk reclaimed ownership, after Mr Walker-Pearlman reportedly fell behind on the repayments.

In 2021, Musk tweeted that his "primary home" was a modest prefabricated house that cost him about $50,000 on the southern tip of Texas, where his aerospace company SpaceX operates - an area that has officially become a city called Starbase.

"It's kinda awesome," Musk said about the humble dwelling.

The following year, Musk said he did not own a home at all, using it as an example of how low his consumption is, despite his enormous wealth.

"I'm literally staying at friends' places," he told head of media organisation TED, Chris Anderson. "If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla engineering is, I basically rotate through friends' spare bedrooms."

This is nothing new - in 2015, then-Google CEO Larry Page told author Ashlee Vance that Musk was "kind of homeless".

"He'll e-mail and say, 'I don't know where to stay tonight. Can I come over?'"

There has been various speculation over the years that Musk is buying up properties around the US, however the home in Texas appears to be the only official house he personally owns.

Cars that are out of this world

While Musk does not spend big on property, cars are a different matter.

As the owner of Tesla, it's not surprising that he has a large collection of unusual, and in some cases extraordinary, vehicles.

They have included a Ford Model T, the 20th Century car credited with being the first affordable vehicle, revolutionising the motor industry.

Others were a 1967 Jaguar E-Type Roadster, which Musk is said to have coveted since he was a child; a 1997 McLaren F1, which he crashed and spent a lot of money repairing before selling; and a Tesla Roadster, which was the first Tesla model to go on sale and was famously fired into space by Musk in 2018.

The most unusual, however, is the 1976 Lotus Esprit driven by James Bond in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me.

In the film, the car, nicknamed Wet Nellie, could transform into a submarine. Musk bought the car in an auction in 2013 for almost $1m with the aim of making its submarine transformation capabilities a reality once more.

Flying to work

Musk has admitted that planes are another thing he is happy to splurge on, but insists it is to do with his dedication to his work.

"If I don't use the plane, then I have less hours to work," he said in the 2022 TED interview.

Among the private jets in his collection are a number of Gulfstream models, which cost tens of millions of dollars each.

He uses them to travel between SpaceX and Tesla sites in the US, as well as for international travel.

Unconventional philanthropy?

Musk has donated billions of dollars in shares to charities, according to US regulatory documents, and has pledged many millions to various causes. But his philanthropy has been criticised.

The New York Times last year called it "haphazard and largely self-serving - making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses".

His charitable organisation, the Musk Foundation, says on its website that it is "dedicated to advancing humanity's progress through ground-breaking scientific research, technological innovation, and ambitious endeavours that push the boundaries of what is possible".

But the New York Times reported that the foundation fell short of the amount it was required to give away for three years in a row. The paper, which saw the foundation's tax filings, also found that many of its donations went to organisations with links to Musk.

Elon Musk, and the Musk Foundation have been contacted for comment.

When asked about philanthropy and charitable causes in the past, Musk appeared to be sceptical of traditional charitable gifts.

"I think if you care about the reality of goodness instead of the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult," he told Chris Anderson in 2022.

To Musk, the very existence of his business ventures is philanthropic: "If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy," he insisted.

Tesla is "accelerating sustainable energy", he said, while Space X "is trying to ensure the long-term survival of humanity" and Neuralink "is trying to help solve brain injuries and existential risk with AI".

A woman who repeatedly claimed to be Madeleine McCann has been found guilty of harassing the missing girl's parents but cleared of a more serious stalking charge.

Julia Wandelt and her supporter Karen Spragg - who was acquitted of all charges - were accused of mounting a "campaign of harassment" against Kate and Gerry McCann, which in Wandelt's case lasted more than two years.

Wandelt, 24, of Lubin, Poland, was found guilty of a lesser charge of harassment and sentenced to six months in prison, which she has already served, having been in custody since February.

In a statement, the McCanns said that, despite the guilty verdict, they "take no pleasure in the result".

In the statement, the McCanns said they did not want to go through the court process, but a decision to prosecute was made by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), based on the evidence gathered by the police.

"We hope Ms Wandelt will receive the appropriate care and support she needs and any vulnerability will not be exploited by others," they said.

"If anyone has new evidence relating to Madeleine's disappearance, please pass this on to the police."

Wandelt was sentenced during a hearing at Leicester Crown Court on Friday.

During her sentencing remarks, Mrs Justice Cutts said she accepted that the Polish national did "not have an easy childhood".

But she said her family history did "not justify the way you behaved".

"It has been confirmed in this case you are not Madeleine McCann," she said.

"There was not proper or logical basis for this."

The judge said the McCanns were "entitled to leave matters with the police and refuse to engage with you particularly in the sad circumstances they live".

She added: "Your constant pestering, badgering and, eventually, attendance at their home address on a dark evening in December was unwarranted."

The judge also granted a restraining order stopping both Wandelt and Mrs Spragg, 61, of Caerau Court Road, Cardiff, from contacting the McCanns, visiting Leicestershire or publishing any broadcast concerning the family.

Wandelt's order will remain in place indefinitely, or until any further ruling is made, while Mrs Spragg's order will be in place for five years.

The trial heard Wandelt has claimed to be Madeleine, whose disappearance during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007 has never been solved, since 2022.

The results of a DNA test carried out after her arrest in February of this year "conclusively proved" she is not the missing child, but, under cross-examination, Wandelt told the court she was still "50-50" about her identity.

The trial heard Wandelt previously claimed to be two other missing children before asserting she was Madeleine.

Giving evidence, she told the jury she had limited memories of her childhood and "could only remember abuse" after experiences with her step-grandfather.

She began to reach out to the McCann family through Glenfield Hospital, where Madeleine's parents worked, in June 2022 and then the Metropolitan Police's investigation into the missing child.

Police looked into Wandelt's claims and called her to "reassure" her she was not Madeleine, the court heard, but contact moved on to directly attempting to reach the McCanns, whose personal details had been included in a leaked Portuguese police file and posted online.

Mrs McCann was subsequently "bombarded" with more than 60 calls and messages on one day, the court was told.

Mr McCann told the court on another occasion, he answered to say "something like, 'you're not Madeleine'".

He said claims like Wandelt's "pull on your heartstrings" but were "damaging" to the search for his daughter.

The court heard Madeleine's younger siblings Amelie, and then Sean, were contacted by Wandelt over social media, and family friends and associates - including the parish priest - all received communications, up until February 2025.

But attempts to press the McCanns for a DNA test were not just made remotely.

Wandelt attended a vigil for Madeleine where she tried to hand organiser Janet Kennedy, Madeleine's great-aunt, an envelope.

She said she "tried to stay courteous and calm", but told the jury she was "stunned" by the approach.

Mrs Kennedy later tore up the letter, the court heard.

After becoming aware of Wandelt's visit to the vigil and then Charing Cross police station to have DNA - which was later destroyed - taken, Det Con Mark Draycott told the trial he called Wandelt for a second time to say "in no uncertain terms" that she was not Madeleine.

He advised her if she returned to Leicestershire she could face harassment charges.

The conversation - which was played in court - was recorded without Det Con Draycott's knowledge, the jury heard, and uploaded to a YouTube crime podcast with Wandelt.

Prosecutor Michael Duck KC said it was around this time that Mrs Spragg, of Caerau Court Road, Cardiff, struck up a relationship online with Wandelt to support her claims and "conspiracy theories".

'Horrible memories'

A WhatsApp exchange in November 2024 between Wandelt and Mrs Spragg included jokes about going through the McCanns' bins and stealing cutlery from a restaurant after they visited to obtain DNA, the court heard.

Giving evidence from behind a privacy screen, Mrs McCann testified that she was distressed after being confronted on her driveway by the defendants, who pleaded for a DNA test, in December 2024

She said she felt "invaded in her own home", while Mr McCann, who had arrived a short while later, told the court: "It brings back a lot of horrible memories of when the media was camped outside our house."

Wandelt appeared on Dr Phil in the US, which prosecutors said kept her public profile high, and had planned further media appearances on her return to the UK when instead both defendants were arrested in February 2025.

During cross-examination, Wandelt said she was still "50-50" about being Madeleine, despite DNA testing by police carried out after the arrests conclusively proving she is not.

She questioned the authenticity of the DNA results when told the results at HMP Peterborough on 1 April this year, and demanded to see the "entire paperwork".

Follow BBC Leicester on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.

Former footballer Joey Barton has been found guilty of six counts of sending "grossly offensive" social media posts directed at broadcaster Jeremy Vine and television pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko.

Barton, 43, compared Aluko and Ward to the serial killer couple Fred and Rose West, and called Vine a "bike nonce" in posts sent between January and March 2024.

Jurors at Liverpool Crown Court accepted the prosecution's argument that Barton had "crossed the line between free speech and a crime" on six counts.

But they cleared the ex-Manchester City, Everton and Newcastle midfielder of six other counts of sending a grossly offensive electronic communication with intent to cause distress or anxiety.

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.

Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar lead the nominees for the 2026 Grammy Awards, while K-Pop has broken into the song of the year category for the first time.

For the second year in a row, Compton rapper Lamar has the most nominations - nine in total - including a coveted album of the year nod for the sleek, fiery GNX.

Gaga is also up for the main prize for Mayhem, a record that leans into her own history, and marks a return to her electro-pop roots. She has seven nominations overall.

Meanwhile, two K-Pop songs are shortlisted for song of the year: Rosé and Bruno Mars' frothy pop hit APT, and Hunter/x's Golden, the breakout hit from Netflix's animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters.

Both Gaga and Lamar have five previous nominations for album of the year, but neither has ever lifted the coveted gold gramophone in that category.

If Lamar wins next February, GNX would become the first rap album to earn the night's main prize since Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in 2004.

He faces competition from fellow rap maverick Tyler, The Creator with his wildly inventive Chromakopia; and reunited hip-hop duo Clipse, whose Let God Sort Em Out is their first release since 2009.

It is the first time in Grammy history that three rap albums have made the shortlist for album of the year.

Also nominated is Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny - who is also set to headline next year's Super Bowl half time show.

He's shortlisted for the musically ambitious Debí Tirar Más Fotos, which fuses live instrumentation with the hip-swaying pulse of reggaeton.

British stars Olivia Dean and Lola Young have got their first ever Grammy nominations in the best new artist category, where they will compete against pop star Addison Rae and global girl group Katseye.

The nominees were revealed in a live stream by a host of stars, including 2025 winners Chappell Roan, Doechii and Sabrina Carpenter, and British stars such as Sam Smith and Marcus Mumford.

Who has the most nominations?

• Kendrick Lamar - nine
• Lady Gaga - seven
• Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter, Leon Thomas - six

The 'big four' awards

Song of the year

• Lady Gaga – Abracadabra
• Doechii - Anxiety
• Rosé & Bruno Mars - APT
• Bad Bunny - DtMF
• Hunter/x - Golden
• Kendrick Lamar feat SZA - Luther
• Sabrina Carpenter - Manchild
• Billie Eilish - Wildflower

Record of the year

• Bad Bunny - DtMF
• Sabrina Carpenter - Manchild
• Doechii - Anxiety
• Billie Eilish - Wildflower
• Lady Gaga – Abracadabra
• Kendrick Lamar feat SZA - Luther
• Chappell Roan - The Subway
• Rosé & Bruno Mars - APT

Album of the year

• Bad Bunny - Debí Tirar Más Fotos
• Justin Bieber - Swag
• Sabrina Carpenter - Man's Best Friend
• Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out
• Lady Gaga - Mayhem
• Kendrick Lamar - GNX
• Leon Thomas – Mutt
• Tyler, the Creator – Chromakopia

Best new artist

• Olivia Dean
• Katseye
• The Marias
• Addison Rae
• Sombr
• Leon Thomas
• Alex Warren
• Lola Young

Why isn't Taylor Swift nominated?

This is the first time since 2006 that Taylor Swift hasn't been eligible for the Grammys.

The star's latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, was released in October, missing the cut-off point for nominations.

To qualify, a song or album must have been released between 31 August, 2024, and 30 August, 2025.

The Life of a Showgirl will therefore be eligible for the 2027 ceremony, and looks certain to secure Swift her eighth nomination for album of the year.

How are the Grammys decided?

Almost 23,000 entries were submitted for the 2026 Grammys awards.

The biggest field was for song of the year, which had 1,015 entries.

The least populated category was best compilation soundtrack for visual media, with just 48 entries.

Once the submissions are screened and verified, voting members take over. Nearly 15,000 musicians, critics and music industry professionals cast ballots to decide the final nominees.

After the publication of the shortlist, a final round voting will take place between 12 December and 5 January.

The winners will be announced at a star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles on 1 February 2026.

A pay package that could be worth $1 trillion has been approved for Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The mind-meltingly large number is conditional on achieving certain targets for the company - but what does one trillion actually look like?

Take our quiz to understand the scale of how the world's richest man could get richer.

A former Israeli hostage who was released last month has told Israeli TV that he was sexually assaulted during his two years in captivity in Gaza.

In an interview with Channel 13's Hazinor programme, Rom Braslavski, 21, described being stripped naked and tied up by members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

"It was sexual violence, and its main purpose was humiliation. Its goal was to humiliate me, to crush my dignity," he said.

He is the first man held hostage to allege publicly that he was sexually assaulted.

Warning: This article contains details some readers may find disturbing.

Rom Braslavski was on leave from his service as a soldier in the Israeli military and was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival when Hamas and allied Palestinian armed groups attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.

Israel responded to the attacks by launching a military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 68,800 people, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Four weeks ago, Mr Braslavski was among the last 20 living Israeli hostages who were released under a US-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

In the interview with Channel 13, broadcast late on Thursday, Mr Braslavski said his treatment by PIJ deteriorated rapidly after he had refused to convert from Judaism to Islam in March this year, which was also when the previous ceasefire collapsed.

He said he was kept blindfolded for three weeks, had stones pushed into his ears to limit his hearing, and had his rations of food and water reduced.

Then, he added, his captors received what they described as an order to torture him.

Mr Braslavski said they tied him up, punched him, and whipped him with a metal cable – and that this was repeated several times a day.

"I entered into a loop, which I doubted I would come out of alive," he recalled.

In August 2025, PIJ posted a video in which Mr Braslavski was seen crying and saying that he had run out of food and water, was unable to stand or walk, and was "at death's door".

Following the publication of the video, Mr Braslavski told Channel 13, his captors also began to sexually assault him.

"They stripped me of all my clothes, my underwear, everything. They tied me up from the... When I was completely naked I was wiped out, dying without food and I prayed to God: 'Save me, get me out of this already'," he said.

When asked whether his captors did "more things like that", Mr Braslavski replied: "Yes. It's hard for me to talk about this part specifically. I don't like to talk about it. And it's hard. It was a horrific thing."

He added: "You just pray to God for it to stop. And while I was there, every day, every beating, every day, I'd say to myself: 'I survived another day in hell. Tomorrow morning, I'll wake up to another hell. And another hell'."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Mr Braslavski had shown "extraordinary courage in sharing the horrors of his captivity, including a horrific sexual assault he endured".

"The world must understand the scale of the crimes committed by the terrorists in Gaza, heinous cruelty, sexual violence, and abuse," he wrote on X.

At least four women held as hostages have spoken publicly about alleged incidents of sexual abuse against themselves or fellow captives, according to Reuters.

A PIJ official told Reuters news agency that Mr Braslavski's allegation of sexual assault was "incorrect", without elaborating.

The UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict said in March 2024 that she and a team of experts had found "convincing information" of rape and sexualised torture being committed against some hostages in Gaza. They also found reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred in multiple locations, including rape and gang rape, during the 7 October attacks. Hamas said the report's findings were "baseless".

A separate report by a UN commission of inquiry in March 2025 concluded that Israel had "increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians", including "forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault". Israel called the allegations "unfounded".

Last week, the former top lawyer in the Israeli military resigned after saying she was responsible for the leaking of a video that purportedly shows soldiers abusing a Palestinian detainee at a base in Israel last year. The detainee was treated for severe injuries after allegedly being stabbed in the rectum. Five soldiers have been charged over the incident.

The recent cases of prisoners being mistakenly released has put a fresh spotlight on the demands facing the justice system.

Prison overcrowding, staffing levels and government funding have all been called into question.

How many prisoners have been released by mistake?

There were 262 prisoners accidentally released in the 12 months to March 2025, compared with 115 the previous year.

Of 121 prisons across England and Wales, 72 released at least one prisoner by mistake in 2024-25.

The overall number of releases has also increased - but not by as much.

There were just over 57,000 releases of prisoners who had finished the custodial part of their sentences in England and Wales in 2024-25. This includes the period when some prisoners were released after serving 40% of their sentence.

The year before there were about 50,000 releases. That's a rise in the number of releases of about 13% - a lot lower proportionally than the increase in errors.

One in 10 released from 'escort areas'

The majority of accidental releases were from a prison itself.

Pentonville Prison in London released the most in 2024-25 - 16, up from six the year before.

To put that in context, Pentonville had a population of just under 1,200 in March 2025. So that's equivalent to letting out more than one in every 100 prisoners by mistake over the year.

Another category of mistaken release is from "escort areas" - places where prisoners are being taken between prisons, to and from court hearings or to immigration removal centres.

Around one in 10 were released in error from these areas, the figures show.

However it's not clear from the data how many had been convicted or were in prison on remand, awaiting a trial or sentencing hearing.

Staffing challenges

At the end of June 2025, there were a total of 36,627 people working in prison service establishments across England and Wales.

That's 787 fewer people than a year ago, but well above the staff numbers in previous years.

However staff turnover is an ongoing issue.

In the year to June, nearly 13% of staff left the prison service, almost twice the 7.1% turnover rate across the Civil Service.

Half had spent a year or less in the job.

Sickness rates also impact operations.

In the year to June, prison staff missed an average of12 days of work due to sickness. In two out of five cases, the absence was related to a mental health issue.

For comparison, average workers in the UK miss just over four days a year due to sickness.

Government funding

The mistaken releases have led to renewed questions over government funding for the justice system.

Former Conservative justice secretary Alex Chalk says the MoJ, which is responsible for prisons, the probation system, courts and legal aid, spends in a year the amount "spent by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) every two weeks".

MoJ is spending this year is around £13bn according to the National Audit Office - compared to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which spent nearly £276bn in 2023-24.

And, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, the MoJ is expected to be 5.6% smaller than it was in 2010 by the end of the current parliament.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Six police officers will face a misconduct process following an investigation into their action after three people died in a car crash.

Sophie Russon, 20, Eve Smith, 21, Darcy Ross, 21, Rafel Jeanne, 24, and Shane Loughlin, 32, were last seen at about 02:00 GMT on 4 March 2023 after they went missing on a night out.

The group were later found in a crashed car near Newport Road in Cardiff.

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.

Thousands of North Sea oil workers are being told they must lose weight if they are to keep flying offshore - or face losing their jobs.

From November next year, industry body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) said the maximum clothed weight for a worker heading offshore should be 124.7kg (19.5 st) - so they can be winched to safety in an emergency.

The 249kg (39st) maximum Coastguard rescue helicopter winch load is made up of that figure plus the average 90.3kg (14st) weight of a rescue worker, a 29kg (4.5st) stretcher and the 5kg (0.8st) kit.

OEUK said more than 2,200 workers were currently above the weight limit, and jobs could be lost in the worst case scenario.

The new safe weight limit policy comes after the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) warned that rescue winches - which are critical during offshore emergencies - cannot safely lift heavier people.

OEUK said the average weight of offshore workers had risen by almost 10kg (1.5st) since 2008.

The decision to implement a safe weight limit for offshore workers follows a review by industry experts over the past two-and-a half years.

Rules about shoulder size were previously introduced for workers travelling to and from offshore installations by helicopter.

Passengers with a shoulder width of 22in (56cm) or more were classed as "extra broad" and had to sit next to a similarly large helicopter window, so they could escape.

Could jobs be lost?

Graham Skinner, the health and safety manager at OEUK, said it was hoped the new safety policy - as part of a "robust safety culture" - would not lead to job losses, but he could not rule it out.

"That would be the absolute worst-case scenario.

"Employers will have a duty to support their workers through this and try to find reasonable solutions for it, but in the very worst cases that would be the case for some people."

Mr Skinner described it as "really important" that there was a clear message to the workforce that the new rules were going to come in.

"Hopefully that is the impetus for everyone to get behind the policy and lose weight in time for November next year," he said.

"There are those who are going to have a real challenge over the next 12 months to lose weight to get under the weight limit.

"There is about 2,270 that are going to have to lose a little bit of weight to make sure they can continue working after November next year.

"At that point an offshore worker who weighs over 124 kg will not get their medical and that will preclude them from getting on a helicopter."

However, Mr Skinner said they were "really confident" that the "vast majority" of workers were going to get under the weight limit.

Some are extremely fit

He cited the support they would get from their employers, the offshore operators, and the offshore community itself.

"We have already heard of offshore workers who are offering circuit training and gym sessions for workers," he added.

"So it's a great opportunity for the community to come together."

John Boland, the regional officer at the Unite union, said: "We would hope that nobody loses their job through this and there can be support put in to stop that from happening.

"The biggest concerns we have had are from individuals that are naturally larger built and in some cases are extremely fit but are above that actual weight limit.

"Those are discussions we need to have, how we can support those individuals as well."

The mandatory implementation of the new policy will be from 1 November 2026.

Explosions have been heard near the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, a day after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said it would agree to a humanitarian ceasefire.

Residents in Khartoum, which is controlled by the army, told the AFP news agency that they were woken overnight by the sound of drones and explosions.

The blasts appeared to take place near a military base and a power station in the early hours of Friday morning, the residents said.

The RSF has not addressed these accounts, but Sudan's military-led government said it would be wary of agreeing to a truce as the group did not "respect" ceasefires.

The two sides have been embroiled in a civil war that has killed at least 150,000 people and forced 12 million others from their homes since it erupted in April 2023.

This week a UN-backed global hunger monitor confirmed that famine conditions were spreading in conflict zones.

On Friday, drones were heard not only in Khartoum, but also 300km (186 miles) north of the city, in the military-controlled town of Atbara.

"Anti-aircraft defences shot them down, but I saw fires breaking out and heard sounds of explosions in the east of the city," a resident there told AFP.

The day before, the RSF announced it had agreed to a humanitarian truce proposed by the US, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The four countries put forward the plan in September - and said it should be followed by a permanent ceasefire and a transition to civilian rule.

At the time the Sudanese government rejected "foreign interference" and any attempts that equated it with a "racist terrorist militia that relies on foreign mercenaries".

It is not clear if the proposal has been modified since then.

But during a press conference on Friday, Sudan's ambassador to South Africa said it was too early for his country to agree to the plan.

"From our experience, we had many truces at the beginning of the war but every time there was no respect from [the RSF]," Osman Abufatima Adam Mohammed said.

"They use these truces to move to new areas and make moves against the government."

The ambassador opposed the UAE's presence at the ceasefire talks, repeating his government's allegation that the Gulf nation was supplying the RSF with weapons and foreign fighters.

UN experts say accusations of such military support are credible, but the UAE has denied all involvement with the RSF.

The RSF and the military have agreed to ceasefire proposals before, but none have stuck.

This time, the RSF waited until it had finally seized el-Fasher, a key city that it had been blockading for 18 months, before announcing it was on board with the truce.

Now that the paramilitary group has consolidated control over el-Fasher and, consequently, the vast wider western region of Darfur, it may have greater leverage in future ceasefire negotiations.

But the RSF is also facing an international backlash against widespread reports of mass killings and sexual violence during the fall of el-Fasher, which it has denied.

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

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

It has appeared in Tesla showrooms, on its factory floors and has even posed with Kim Kardashian.

But Elon Musk's vision for his human-like robot Optimus is much grander than that.

Since first unveiling it at a Tesla showcase in 2022, the tech billionaire has suggested his company's droid could play a huge role in the homes and lives of people all over the world.

Along with self-driving robotaxis and Cybertrucks, Musk believes Tesla robots are key to establishing a foothold in the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape.

And investors who signed off on his $1tn pay package on Thursday would appear to agree.

One of the many tasks Musk must complete to get his whopping pay deal is to deliver a million AI bots over the next decade.

But is Tesla's big bet on humanoid robots rooted in science fiction or reality?

Big potential

Silicon Valley is gunning hard for humanoids.

A report released by Morgan Stanley on Friday predicted Apple, which is reportedly looking into the robots, could potentially earn $133bn a year from them by 2040.

Foxconn is reported to be deploying them at its Nvidia factory in Texas.

The idea of advanced AI within a human-shaped shell is an astonishingly powerful combination in theory. It would let the tech interact with the physical world around it – and yes that includes us.

While many companies have sought to develop human-like robots for factory and industrial use - such as UK robotics firm Humanoid - some are already looking to insert the tech in homes.

The highly-publicised Neo from tech firm 1X, slated to launch in 2026, can do menial chores like emptying the dishwasher, folding clothes and fetching you items.

It will cost $20,000 but it does come with a caveat - the WSJ reported it was actually controlled by a person wearing a virtual reality headset.

Forrester analyst Brian Hopkins said the falling costs of components, combined with improvements to robot dexterity and AI, was helping to make humanoid robots feasible for a variety of different settings.

"From warehouses and restaurants to elder care and security, new use cases are gaining traction fast," he wrote in a blog post.

"If current trajectories hold, humanoid robots could disrupt many physical-service industries significantly by 2030."

Musk previously told investors his robots had "the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business, over time".

He went one step further after his pay package deal was approved on Thursday, saying he believed it could be "the biggest product of all time by far, bigger than cell phones, bigger than anything".

He has also suggested it might boost Tesla's AI ambitions - particularly in advancing artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems capable of matching human abilities.

"Tesla AI might play a role in AGI, given that it trains against the outside world, especially with the advent of Optimus," he wrote on X in 2022.

Elsewhere in the space, Boston Dynamics' hydraulic humanoid Atlas has captivated millions on YouTube with its gymnastics and dance routines.

Viral videos of its leaps, bounds, somersaults and backflips have shown the advances in robotics over the years - with scientists now seizing upon the AI boom to boost their capabilities with systems enabling them to undertake more complex tasks.

When it was retired last year, it was replaced with a newer, fully electric model developers said could contort its metal frame in even more ways.

But many of the roboticists the BBC has spoken to over the years have rolled their eyes about tech firms shaping robots like humans.

Practically, there is little reason for robots to have legs.

The mechanics and hardware involved in creating machine legs are far more intensive.

As one scientist put it - "wheels are so much more efficient".

And don't get them started on why a robot doesn't need to have a head.

Psychologically though, humanoids have long been a human fascination – and something reflected decades of sci-fi.

You need only look to the legacy of characters such as Star Wars' C-3PO, Futurama's Bender or the Terminator to see humans might sometimes feel more comfortable around something closely resembling us.

Back in reality, humanoid machines have been often far less polished and more gimmicky, clumsy and buggy than their fictional counterparts.

But that appears to be changing with the likes of Optimus and sleeker droids which edge us closer to living in an uncanny valley.

Tesla's droid has been appearing in more public settings as of late - serving burgers and popcorn to customers at the company's Hollywood diner.

Sam Altman, boss of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, said in May he doesn't think the world is ready for humanoids, while simultaneously describing it as an incoming moment.

There's no love lost between him and Elon Musk but on this occasion they seem to be on the same page that the robots are on their way – and Musk certainly has the power, the influence and the cash to make it happen.

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

A pay package that could be worth $1 trillion has been approved for Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The mind-meltingly large number is conditional on achieving certain targets for the company - but what does one trillion actually look like?

Take our quiz to understand the scale of how the world's richest man could get richer.

The recent cases of prisoners being mistakenly released has put a fresh spotlight on the demands facing the justice system.

Prison overcrowding, staffing levels and government funding have all been called into question.

How many prisoners have been released by mistake?

There were 262 prisoners accidentally released in the 12 months to March 2025, compared with 115 the previous year.

Of 121 prisons across England and Wales, 72 released at least one prisoner by mistake in 2024-25.

The overall number of releases has also increased - but not by as much.

There were just over 57,000 releases of prisoners who had finished the custodial part of their sentences in England and Wales in 2024-25. This includes the period when some prisoners were released after serving 40% of their sentence.

The year before there were about 50,000 releases. That's a rise in the number of releases of about 13% - a lot lower proportionally than the increase in errors.

One in 10 released from 'escort areas'

The majority of accidental releases were from a prison itself.

Pentonville Prison in London released the most in 2024-25 - 16, up from six the year before.

To put that in context, Pentonville had a population of just under 1,200 in March 2025. So that's equivalent to letting out more than one in every 100 prisoners by mistake over the year.

Another category of mistaken release is from "escort areas" - places where prisoners are being taken between prisons, to and from court hearings or to immigration removal centres.

Around one in 10 were released in error from these areas, the figures show.

However it's not clear from the data how many had been convicted or were in prison on remand, awaiting a trial or sentencing hearing.

Staffing challenges

At the end of June 2025, there were a total of 36,627 people working in prison service establishments across England and Wales.

That's 787 fewer people than a year ago, but well above the staff numbers in previous years.

However staff turnover is an ongoing issue.

In the year to June, nearly 13% of staff left the prison service, almost twice the 7.1% turnover rate across the Civil Service.

Half had spent a year or less in the job.

Sickness rates also impact operations.

In the year to June, prison staff missed an average of12 days of work due to sickness. In two out of five cases, the absence was related to a mental health issue.

For comparison, average workers in the UK miss just over four days a year due to sickness.

Government funding

The mistaken releases have led to renewed questions over government funding for the justice system.

Former Conservative justice secretary Alex Chalk says the MoJ, which is responsible for prisons, the probation system, courts and legal aid, spends in a year the amount "spent by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) every two weeks".

MoJ is spending this year is around £13bn according to the National Audit Office - compared to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which spent nearly £276bn in 2023-24.

And, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, the MoJ is expected to be 5.6% smaller than it was in 2010 by the end of the current parliament.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

A Brazilian hairdresser Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her photograph was splashed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has told the BBC she initially thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.

But then her social media blew up and people started tagging her on Instagram.

"At first it was a few random messages. I thought they were mistaking me for someone else," she told the BBC. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was real."

Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she searched on Google to understand what was going on.

What had happened was the fallout of a press conference by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party BJP and the Election Commission (EC) of committing voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has denied the allegations.

Hours after the press conference, in a post on X, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an oath with the names of ineligible voters "so that necessary proceedings could be initiated". They did not respond to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case. The BBC has reached out to the poll panel for response.

Gandhi has made a series of accusations of "vote theft" against the poll panel since early August.

In his latest claims, he said his team had looked through the Election Commission's voter list data and found that of the approximately 20 million voters, 2.5 million were irregular entries - including duplicates, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation of the voters' list.

To prove his claims, he showed a number of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi standing in front of a big image of Nery, while another showed a compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her photos.

"Who is this lady? How old is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He explained that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across multiple voter entries under different names. He described Nery as a model who had appeared on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The 29-year-old confirmed to the BBC that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the person in the images."

She clarified that she was a hairdresser and not a model and that the photo was taken in March 2017 when she was 21, just outside her home. The photographer, she said, "thought I was pretty and asked to take photos of me".

Now years later, all the attention in the past two days from "people from India, many of them journalists", has left her scared.

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the parties involved," she said.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling me. They found the number of the place where I work.

"I had to remove the salon name from my profile because they were disturbing my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the sudden attention. Until recently, he says India meant only Caminho das Índias - the 2009 Brazilian primetime show - to him.

He's still trying to make sense of the events of the last few days in a country thousands of miles away.

Some people had reached out to him from India a week back, asking him who the woman in the photo was, he told the BBC.

"I didn't reply. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he told the BBC. "I thought it was a scam. I blocked and reported it."

But since Gandhi's press conference, "things have exploded".

"People were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I deactivated my Instagram to try to understand what was going on. Later I googled it and realised what was happening, but at first I had no idea."

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to the Nery's photo without permission. "People were making memes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's absurd."

In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out as a photographer when he invited Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photoshoot. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo blew up… reached around 57 million views," he said.

He has now deleted the link from his Unsplash account but he sent us screenshots taken earlier that showed other photos of Nery from the same shoot.

• Why India's Election Commission is facing a test of credibility

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt invaded. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform was open and I uploaded like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you panic. The first reaction is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Neither Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that happened at the other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.

We asked Ferrero if all this helped uncover electoral fraud, would that be positive?

"Yes, I think that would be positive. But I don't really know the details," he said.

Nery who has never left the country says: "This is far from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."

Spoiler warning: This article reveals details from The Celebrity Traitors finale and previous episodes

There have been murders, betrayals, a serious side-eye, and a fart that cut through all the tension.

And on Thursday night, we finally found out who has emerged victorious as the winner of The Celebrity Traitors.

Out of 19 contestants, just five remained. Traitors Cat Burns and Alan Carr, and faithfuls Joe Marler, Nick Mohammed and David Olusoga.

Soon, it was down to just three: Carr, Mohammed and Olusoga.

But in the end, it was Alan Carr who won the prize money, in a move that broke the internet - and left him in floods of tears.

"It's been tearing me apart, I'm so sorry," he howled, as he told his fellow contestants that he'd always been a traitor. "I'm an awful human being."

"You did brilliantly," the faithfuls all consoled him. "It's all right."

Social media quickly erupted with the news. "Alan winning the whole game after being the most obvious since the beginning," wrote one X user.

"Incredible television," wrote another.

His charity, Neuroblastoma, will get all the prize money, with the final pot coming to £87,500.

Thursday evening's final episode was extended to 70 minutes on BBC One. It had a different start than usual, as all the celebs knew who'd make it to the breakfast table.

There was some very uplifting, and very un-Traitors-esque music, as we recapped some moments from each of the finalists' time in the castle.

As ever, Alan Carr - dressed in a dashing red coat - gave us some of the most memorable lines.

"Let's face it, I started this game a bit of a nervous wreck. I've thrown some really good friends under the bus, I've murdered national treasures in plain sight. I'm clearly a better liar and traitor than I thought I was."

Meanwhile, Marler noted that being in the final was "way more stressful than playing for England", while Olusoga said he was "completely amazed" to have made it so far. You and us both, David.

Next up was the challenge, with the remaining contestants getting on board a train named - of course - The Traitors Express.

The challenge saw them ripping up portraits of former contestants, which they seemed to take great pleasure in doing.

And Marler was the highlight here, being hit not once, not twice, but THREE times on the top of his head by the lid of a heavy wooden box.

Soon, it was time for the roundtable.

Burns and Carr did a pinky promise beforehand, pledging to stick together. "We've come a long way, I'm not going to throw him under a bus," said Burns, while Carr just giggled.

And Carr did stick to his promise - voting out Olusoga in the roundtable.

But, having slipped under the radar for most of the game, in the end it was Burns who got the most votes.

Carr looked like he was in a world of pain to be the last traitor standing. "Now I'm on my own, I feel terrified," he said. "I'm a loose cannon, a rudderless ship."

Social media and onlookers were equally disappointed.

"Caaaattt! I did NOT want Cat to be banished. A truly loveable traitor," said entertainment reporter Natalie Jamieson.

But there was no time to dwell on her departure. Before long, they were at the endgame - which was what we were really all here for.

The final four stood standing over the fire pit. And the Nick-Joe alliance broke down, just when it mattered the most, in a truly WTF moment.

Marler was painfully banished with the prize money in sight - after Mohammed voted him out. "It hurts to be stabbed in the back last minute like that," said Marler.

Finally, just three players remained in the game - Carr, Olusoga and Mohammed.

Carr, looking incredibly smug, voted to end the game. So did Olusoga, and it all came down to Mohammed, who did the same - which meant that Carr, as a traitor, was the winner.

Once he recovered from his bout of tears, Carr was able to enjoy the moment.

"What a roller coaster. I was awful at lying, I had no poker face and here I am a winner," Carr said.

And he even made light of that infamous murder - his best friend Paloma Faith in episode two - reaching over to host Claudia Winkleman in the final scene and touching her cheek.

"You've got something on your face Claudia," he said, with his trademark giggle.

The last few weeks of celebrity gossiping, scheming and the occasional fart may feel like one big crazy jumbled dream. But it really did all happen. And we will miss it.

Two people have been arrested on suspicion of being in charge of a dog dangerously out of control after a nine-month-old baby boy was killed in an attack by an XL bully in south-east Wales.

Gwent Police and paramedics went to an address in Crossway, Rogiet, near Caldicot, Monmouthshire, on Sunday evening. The baby died at the scene.

Assistant Chief Constable Vicki Townsend said the arrests were made as part of a "wide range" of inquiries and urged people "not to speculate", adding if anyone had information "on the dog involved - a male, black XL bully - and its previous behaviour, please contact us directly".

The pair were also arrested on suspicion of child neglect and were released on bail.

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Thousands of North Sea oil workers are being told they must lose weight if they are to keep flying offshore - or face losing their jobs.

From November next year, industry body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) said the maximum clothed weight for a worker heading offshore should be 124.7kg (19.5 st) - so they can be winched to safety in an emergency.

The 249kg (39st) maximum Coastguard rescue helicopter winch load is made up of that figure plus the average 90.3kg (14st) weight of a rescue worker, a 29kg (4.5st) stretcher and the 5kg (0.8st) kit.

OEUK said more than 2,200 workers were currently above the weight limit, and jobs could be lost in the worst case scenario.

The new safe weight limit policy comes after the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) warned that rescue winches - which are critical during offshore emergencies - cannot safely lift heavier people.

OEUK said the average weight of offshore workers had risen by almost 10kg (1.5st) since 2008.

The decision to implement a safe weight limit for offshore workers follows a review by industry experts over the past two-and-a half years.

Rules about shoulder size were previously introduced for workers travelling to and from offshore installations by helicopter.

Passengers with a shoulder width of 22in (56cm) or more were classed as "extra broad" and had to sit next to a similarly large helicopter window, so they could escape.

Could jobs be lost?

Graham Skinner, the health and safety manager at OEUK, said it was hoped the new safety policy - as part of a "robust safety culture" - would not lead to job losses, but he could not rule it out.

"That would be the absolute worst-case scenario.

"Employers will have a duty to support their workers through this and try to find reasonable solutions for it, but in the very worst cases that would be the case for some people."

Mr Skinner described it as "really important" that there was a clear message to the workforce that the new rules were going to come in.

"Hopefully that is the impetus for everyone to get behind the policy and lose weight in time for November next year," he said.

"There are those who are going to have a real challenge over the next 12 months to lose weight to get under the weight limit.

"There is about 2,270 that are going to have to lose a little bit of weight to make sure they can continue working after November next year.

"At that point an offshore worker who weighs over 124 kg will not get their medical and that will preclude them from getting on a helicopter."

However, Mr Skinner said they were "really confident" that the "vast majority" of workers were going to get under the weight limit.

Some are extremely fit

He cited the support they would get from their employers, the offshore operators, and the offshore community itself.

"We have already heard of offshore workers who are offering circuit training and gym sessions for workers," he added.

"So it's a great opportunity for the community to come together."

John Boland, the regional officer at the Unite union, said: "We would hope that nobody loses their job through this and there can be support put in to stop that from happening.

"The biggest concerns we have had are from individuals that are naturally larger built and in some cases are extremely fit but are above that actual weight limit.

"Those are discussions we need to have, how we can support those individuals as well."

The mandatory implementation of the new policy will be from 1 November 2026.

'It's not nice to see it obviously'

'I would never go into what happened'

Williams 'baffled' by comments

"There is a war-opposing network in the world, with two focal points: one of power led by the US president and one of spirit found here with the Holy Father," Viktor Orban said on Monday after meeting Pope Leo at the Vatican.

"We draw strength, motivation, and blessing from both," said the Hungarian prime minister.

If his ally in the White House, US President Donald Trump, was on his mind, then his thoughts could well have turned to a tricky meeting that awaits him next week in Washington.

The man Trump has called a "great leader", and who has long provoked admiration in MAGA circles, suddenly finds himself in an unusual position - at odds with the US president on an issue of critical importance.

At the centre of those talks will be new US pressure on Hungary and Slovakia to wean themselves urgently off Russian oil - Trump's latest gambit in his efforts to pressurise Russia into ending its war on Ukraine.

Asked recently whether Trump had gone too far in imposing sanctions on Russia's two biggest oil companies, Orban said "from a Hungarian point of view, yes".

Orban has been using his country's heavy dependence on Russian oil and gas to advance his own agenda in several ways.

He has used it as a weapon to attack Brussels, as a means to maintain his good relations with Moscow, and as a platform upon which he hopes to win re-election next April in Hungary. He has promised "cheap Russian energy" to voters.

He will go into this election portraying himself as a safe pair of hands in an increasingly uncertain world. But Orban is trailing in most opinion polls, after his government was shaken by the meteoric rise of opposition Tisza party leader Peter Magyar.

The Hungarian PM has also been angered by repeated Ukrainian drone attacks on the Druzhba pipeline this summer, which briefly disrupted supplies to his country.

• The 'strongman' PM who inspired Trump's playbook
• Orban accused of using Ukraine spy row in fight for political survival

Senior Hungarian officials have been hinting for months that they believe the war in Ukraine could be over by the end of the year - a seemingly absurd claim, until news of a planned summit in Budapest between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin broke earlier this month.

But Orban's carefully laid plans began to unravel on 21 October, when the White House announced that the summit had been called off.

Orban's government had been secretly working on the summit plans for months. Balazs Orban, Orban's political director (no relation), enjoys close relations with US Vice-President JD Vance, and is believed to have played an important role.

Orban hopes to persuade Trump to ease the pressure on Hungary at least until the election when the pair meet in Washington next week.

The Hungarian government appears to be counting on the idea that Trump is bored by the war in Ukraine, and wants to turn his back on it if no deal is done soon.

Orban has sharply opposed Western military and financial support for Ukraine, and rules out Ukraine's membership of Nato and the EU. He portrays Trump as a pro-peace president, giving short shrift to what he sees as the warmongers of the EU.

The climax of the cancelled summit in Budapest would have been the moment he appeared on the balcony of the Carmelite Convent on Castle Hill, overlooking the Danube, flanked by Presidents Trump and Putin. How could Hungarians vote against such an internationally successful leader, he might have asked.

In Rome on Monday, despite US dismissals, Orban insisted the summit would still happen - it was just a question of time. At the weekend, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quietly suggested the same.

Under US pressure, will Orban follow Czech lead?

The biggest issue souring US-Hungary relations is oil.

In 2024, Hungary even increased the amount of oil it receives through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline from Russia. On 23 October, just as Orban was addressing a rally of his supporters in front of Parliament in Budapest, the US announced sanctions on the two giant Russian oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft.

Hungary received 64% of its oil through the Friendship pipeline from Russia, via Belarus and Ukraine, in 2020. By 2024 that figure stood at 80%, or 5 million tonnes a year.

The Hungarian government argues that land-based pipelines are the cheapest way to receive oil, and that with no sea coast of its own, it has no alternative. Much smaller quantities are also imported from Kazakhstan, Croatia, Iraq, and Azerbaijan.

Another issue is that Russian Urals crude has a higher sulphur content than the Brent crude supplied from elsewhere. The major Hungarian refinery at Szazhalombatta, run by Hungarian oil giant MOL, and the Slovnaft refinery in Slovakia, also run by MOL, are both set up to process mostly Urals crude, not Brent.

Within the EU, Orban is now the longest standing leader. Far from leaving the bloc, he wants to remake it in his own image, as a union of sovereign nations. For this, he has also won praise from Putin.

But Hungary's argument that it cannot change is undermined by the Czech example. That is a country with a similar population to Hungary, and also landlocked.

The Czech Republic traditionally relied heavily on Russian crude for the eight million tonnes of oil it needs a year.

Starting in early 2022, following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Czech government under Prime Minister Petr Fialla invested heavily in improving the existing Transalpine pipeline to the Italian port of Trieste.

At the same time, its refineries at Kralupy and Litvínov were adapted for Brent crude. In April 2025, the Czech authorities announced proudly that they were no longer receiving a drop of Russian oil.

Energy experts say that while MOL, the Hungarian oil giant, is quietly changing its technology, what is missing is a political decision from the government to shift to the Adria pipeline from the Croatian port of Omisalj.

There are also disputes between the Croatian company Janaf and MOL - over just how much oil the pipeline could support.

When the pair meet next week, Trump will urge Orban to show some political will to wean itself off Russian supplies.

But Orban might see that as a hard decision to explain to Hungarian voters. After arguing for years that Hungary cannot survive without Russian oil and gas, he would lose face if it turns out it can.

Matt Whitaker, US ambassador to Nato, said in a Fox News interview on Sunday that Hungary had still "not made any active steps" to end its dependence on Russian oil.

"There's a lot of planning our friends in Hungary will have to do," he said, and promised US help to Hungary and Croatia to make it happen.

As the seagull flies, Omisalj is only 44 miles (70km) from Trieste. Seaborne oil from Kazakhstan, Libya, Azerbaijan, the US and Iraq could soon be flowing through the Adria pipeline to Hungary too.

Despite Orban's dire warnings of price hikes, there is no data - so far at least - to suggest that Czech consumers have to pay more.

There is nothing his old friend Donald Trump likes more than striking a deal.

Orban is about to find out how persuasive the US president can be.

Tesla shareholders have approved a record-breaking pay package for boss Elon Musk that could be worth nearly $1tn (£760bn).

The unprecedented deal recommended by the firm's board, cleared a vote from shareholders at the firm's annual general meeting on Thursday.

The deal requires Musk, who is already the world's richest man, to drastically raise the electric car firm's market value over a period of years. If he meets various targets, he will be rewarded with hundreds of millions of new shares.

The scale of the deal is controversial, but the Tesla board argued that Musk might leave the company if it was not approved - and that it could not afford to lose him.

The pay package was approved by 75% of Tesla shareholders who cast ballots, drawing loud applause from the audience at the AGM in Austin, Texas.

"What we're about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book," Musk told the audience when he took the stage to more cheers.

"Other shareholder meetings are snoozefests but ours are bangers. Look at this. This is sick," Musk said.

The pay package requires Musk to achieve a series of milestones in order to achieve the massive payday.

These include raising Tesla's market value to $8.5tn from the $1.4tn at time of writing.

He would also need to get a million self-driving "Robotaxi" vehicles into commercial operation.

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In the midst of a still shaky ceasefire, Gazans are taking the first tentative steps along the long road to recovery.

Bulldozers are clearing roads, shovelling the detritus of war into waiting trucks. Mountains of rubble and twisted metal are on either side, the remains of once bustling neighbourhoods.

Parts of Gaza City are disfigured beyond recognition.

"This was my house," says Abu Iyad Hamdouna. He points to a mangled heap of concrete and steel in Sheikh Radwan, which was once one of Gaza City's most densely populated neighbourhoods.

"It was here. But there's no house left."

Abu Iyad is 63. If Gaza ever rises from the ashes, he doesn't expect to be around to see it.

"At this rate, I think it'll take 10 years." He looks exhausted and resigned. "We'll be dead... we'll die without seeing reconstruction."

Nearby, 43-year-old Nihad al-Madhoun and his nephew Said are picking through the wreckage of what was once a home.

The building might well collapse but it doesn't deter them - they collect old breeze blocks and brush thick dust off an old red sofa.

"The removal of rubble alone might take more than five years," he says. "And we will wait. We have no other option."

The sheer scale of the challenge is staggering. The UN estimates the cost of damage at £53bn ($70bn). Almost 300,000 houses and apartments have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN's satellite centre Unosat.

The Gaza Strip is littered with 60 million tonnes of rubble, mixed in with dangerous unexploded bombs and dead bodies.

In all, more than 68,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the past two years, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry. Its figures are accepted by the United Nations and other international bodies.

In the midst of such destruction, it's hard to know where to begin.

There's no shortage of ideas - including grand designs conceived by those with money and power in faraway capitals. The US President Donald Trump had his say too.

But Gazans we spoke to are sceptical of schemes drawn up abroad, and they have visions of their own. So the fight is on to shape Gaza's future.

The question is, who will prevail?

From Trump's riviera to the Phoenix plan

Yahya al-Sarraj, Gaza City's Hamas-appointed mayor, is out on the streets wearing a hi-vis jacket and surveying the ruins. Already, shops and restaurants are starting to reopen, he points out.

"Of course it's very modest," he says, "but they want to live, and they deserve to live."

Gaza is no stranger to these destructions, he adds, recalling several conflicts prior to the cataclysm that erupted, following the devastating attack that Hamas launched on Israel on 7 October 2023.

"We heard about a lot of plans, international, local, regional plans. [But] we have our own plan.

"We call it the Phoenix of Gaza."

This was the first home-grown Palestinian plan to emerge during the war - in a computer-generated video that accompanied it, shattered communities are seen transformed, as if by magic, into modern neighbourhoods.

"We wanted to fill the vacuum," says Yara Salem, an infrastructure specialist, formerly of the World Bank, with experience in conflict areas including post-war Iraq.

"You cannot have foreign-imposed reconstruction plans while you don't have any vision about your own country."

The publication of the Phoenix plan in February followed 13 months of work by a broad coalition of around 700 Palestinian reconstruction experts, some based abroad. It drew on the knowledge and experience of architects and engineers across the Gaza Strip too. Students at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank were also involved as the idea evolved.

Hamas, which exercises political control over the municipalities, was not involved.

Today, the creators of the Phoenix plan know that its fate is out of their hands, as competing interests, in the Middle East and beyond, jostle for control of Gaza's future.

This vision stands in sharp contrast to the glitzy "Gaza Riviera", a controversial proposal first described in February by President Trump during a meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.

Trump famously reposted a bizarre AI-generated video on his social media account, showing himself, Netanyahu and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk enjoying the high life in a kind of Dubai-style fantasy.

A giant golden statue of the president towered over a street and bearded male belly dancers wearing green headbands were pictured on the beach.

Though the video was clearly a spoof, President Trump had already spoken of the US taking "a long-term ownership position" in Gaza.

"Gaza's waterfront property could be very valuable," his son-in-law Jared Kushner told an audience at Harvard University last year, "if people would focus on building up livelihoods."

Trump's 20-point Gaza ceasefire proposal, agreed in October, also includes references to a "Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energise Gaza", alongside an international "Board of Peace" to oversee governance - there has been speculation about whether former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair could end up at its helm.

High-tech, AI-powered 'smart cities'

But Trump's "Gaza Riviera" is not the only glossy vision of a futuristic Gaza that has emerged.

A leaked document, published in August by The Washington Post, painted a similar vision of a high-tech Gaza Strip, under US trusteeship for 10 years.

Dubbed the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust - "Great" for short – the plan was said to be the work of Israeli and American consultants, with input from members of Tony Blair's Institute for Global Change.

The plan envisaged the creation of a series of "modern and AI-powered smart planned cities", noting that poor urban design lay at the heart of "Gaza's ongoing insurgency."

"From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally," the plan's subtitle read, in a nod to the Abraham Accords brokered during Trump's first presidential term, suggesting that a revived Gaza could form part of a much larger regional peace initiative.

The plan also nodded to the idea of "voluntary relocation," under which a quarter of Gaza's population would leave the Strip, in return for a $5,000 (£3,780) relocation package and subsidised rent abroad.

It all stands in sharp contrast to the Phoenix plan that sets out to protect Gaza's existing infrastructure and, where possible, restore the area's social and geographical fabric.

"These sort of almost hallucinatory plans are creating an opening for disaster capitalism that is worrying," argues Raja Khalidi, director general of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, an independent think tank.

"The state has the ability to plan… what sort of Gaza we want to build, and when we want to build it and how much it's going to cost us.

"It has to be a Palestinian vision - my concern [is that] we will be sidelined."

Shelly Culbertson, a senior researcher at the US-based RAND non-partisan think tank and co-author of a detailed study on Gaza reconstruction, also believes that the Gaza Strip is not simply a blank slate waiting to be turned into a new version of Dubai.

"There's a lot of heritage, cities that have been around for… millennia," she says. "It's not good practice to just wipe it all out and start over, but rather build with what you have."

'The soul and spirit of Gaza'

These are not the only plans however. Another, drafted by Egypt and adopted hastily by the Arab League at a summit in Cairo in March, spoke of rebuilding Gaza over a period of five years - like the Phoenix plan, it emphasised the importance of involving Gazans in every stage "to foster a sense of ownership and ensure that the needs of the local community are met".

Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority (PA), led by President Mahmoud Abbas, has been developing its own proposals for the Gaza Strip, as part of a wider plan to reconnect Gaza and the occupied West Bank in a future Palestinian state.

At his office in Ramallah, Estephan Salameh, the PA planning minister told me that whatever plan is settled upon, Gaza of the future would look different, but that some things would have to stay the same.

"Don't forget that 70% of Gaza's population are Palestinian refugees," he says. "And we need to preserve the refugee identity. We need to preserve the soul and the spirit of Gaza."

For Salameh, that means recreating Gaza's pre-war refugee camps, where hundreds of thousands of descendants of Palestinians, who fled or were driven from their homes in the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948-9, have lived ever since.

Over time, the camps have evolved, from the canvas tents and tin shacks of the 1950s into busy, overcrowded communities with some of the highest population densities in the world.

The PA plan is not to recreate slums, but to make sure that tight-knit communities can be restored.

"We want to have Jabalia rebuilt where it was," Salameh says, referring to the biggest camp that was once home to more than 100,000 people, and that is now largely destroyed.

But for the time being, the Palestine Authority's rule only extends to the West Bank, not Gaza. Trump's Gaza ceasefire plan says the Board of Peace will handle Gaza's redevelopment "until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform programme".

A slow, painstaking process

Reconstruction is likely to be a slow, painstaking process, one that Shelly Culbertson calls "incremental urbanism".

"Living in the damaged but habitable communities and rebuilding while in them, we think is going to be a key way of preserving communities and allowing people to move back," she says.

"[But] some places have been so destroyed and damaged and dangerous that the only thing to do really is wall them off, raise them down and completely rebuild.

"This is not going to be a five-year recovery - it's probably going to take decades."

The Palestinian Authority's planning minister predicts a quicker timeline but says nothing can begin until political and security arrangements are in place, borders are open (to allow the import of building materials) and funding is secured.

But therein lies the rub. In order for international donors to pledge the tens of billions of dollars needed to rebuild Gaza, there has to be agreement on what a recovery plan will look like.

Egypt plans to hold a reconstruction summit but a date has not yet been set. And the most likely funders - Saudi Arabia and the UAE - will need reassurances that their colossal investments are not simply going to go up in smoke in some future Gaza war.

But with the current Israeli government strongly opposing the creation of a Palestinian state - something that Saudi Arabia is also pushing for - the political obstacles are formidable.

Israel has previously said that it is not opposed to investors and builders from a variety of countries beginning efforts to rebuild in areas controlled by the IDF.

On a recent visit to Israel, Jared Kushner spoke of building "a new Gaza" on territory still under Israeli military control, saying no reconstruction funds would go to areas controlled by Hamas.

But nothing substantial can happen while the Gaza ceasefire hangs by a thread, and Israel and Hamas still trade occasional blows.

Back in the shattered remains of Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, Abu Iyad Hamdouna has more immediate concerns.

"Reconstruction?" he exclaims. "What about water?"

After five forced displacements during the war, Abu Iyad just wants to stay put, in whatever shelter he can find, or make for himself.

He's not waiting for the Phoenix to rise or indeed for any sort of Gaza Riviera to materialise.

"Here we are, making tents," he says. "We are sitting making tents, next to the house we still cannot live in."

Lead image credit: Bloomberg/Reuters/ Phoenix. Image shows destroyed buildings in Gaza (bottom left) and an AI-generated impression of the Phoenix plan (top left)

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