The Cloverfield Paradox, the third entry in the Cloverfield franchise, has failed to perform as strongly as another big-budget Netflix movie release: Bright. After Matt Reeves’ successful 2008 Cloverfield monster movie, demand for a sequel was incredibly high, but it wasn’t until the shock unveiling of 10 Cloverfield Lane that J. J. Abrams’ fictional world was expanded. Although well received, 10 Cloverfield Lane was markedly different from its supposed predecessor, and a similar approach was taken with The Cloverfield Paradox, which was originally a completely unrelated movie called God Particle. As is typical of Abrams-led projects, secrecy surrounding the third Cloverfield movie was very high indeed, and very little was known about the movie. That was until Super Bowl LII rolled around. Not only did The Cloverfield Paradox‘s first trailer air during the game, but it was revealed that the movie would be released in full on Netflix immediately after the event. Although this innovative method of release was widely praised, the same can’t be said for the film itself, which has attracted largely negative reviews since its release, with many suggesting that the Cloverfield tag is superficial at best, despite the marketing promising otherwise. It now seems as if the statistics are following the critical reaction. Nielsen (via Variety) reports that The Cloverfield Paradox gained 2.8 million U.S. streams in its first three days, rising to 5 million over the week. This is particularly interesting when compared to Bright, another landmark Netflix release that attracted mixed reviews. Bright notched up 11 million views within three days on its way to becoming one of the streaming service’s most-watched original movies. Despite both The Cloverfield Paradox and Bright enduring a tough time from critics, there are a number of other factors that may explain this significant discrepancy. Firstly, it’s important not to discount the star power of Bright‘s Will Smith. While Paradox may have boasted an impressive cast, it did lack a genuine A-List Hollywood figure, whereas Smith is a household name across the globe. Secondly, it’s possible that while many enjoyed the originality of The Cloverfield Paradox‘s surprise release, the move may have actually backfired in terms of hard viewing figures. Releasing a film with little to no build-up can certainly elevate the sense of mystery surrounding it, but those not already invested in the franchise may not have been convinced to spend their time on something they knew almost nothing about. (That’s assuming they knew about it at all.) With that said, perhaps the difference does purely come down to the quality of both releases. While The Cloverfield Paradox was almost universally panned, with only the individual performances of the main cast achieving any sort of acclaim, Bright managed to garner a decent set of supporters who genuinely enjoyed the movie. Plus, there are already plans for a potential Bright sequel. Of course, Cloverfield 4 is also in the pipeline, but given the limited success of The Cloverfield Paradox, expect it to be released and marketed very differently.

The Marvel movie, which boasts a stellar 98 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, begins rolling out in North American theaters Thursday night. Disney and Marvel Studios' Black Panther is set to make history at the Presidents Day box office. If tracking is correct, the critically acclaimed superhero film will take in $165 million-plus over the long four-day weekend in North America, the top showing ever for both the holiday and the month of February. Black Panther will snatch the record from another superhero film Deadpool, which took in $152.2 million over Presidents Day weekend in 2016. A $165 million-plus opening would also be one of the top five or six domestic openings ever for a superhero film, not accounting for inflation. Some box-observers believe $165 million is too low an estimate. Directed by Ryan Coogler, Black Panther is unprecedented in being a big-budget studio tentpole featuring a virtually all-black cast. In the film, Chadwick Boseman stars as T'Challa/Black Panther alongside Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B. Jordan, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis. When Black Panther first came on tracking two weeks ago, market leader NRG forecast a domestic opening of $125 million. By last week, that number had shot up to $150 million-plus. On Tuesday, it was revised upwards to $165 million-plus. The big unknown is how Black Panther will fare overseas, where Hollywood films with a black cast are thought to face challenges. Disney insiders expect Black Panther to open in the $75 million-$115 million range. The tentpole rolls out in about 70 percent of the international marketplace this week; major territories where it doesn't open until later include Russia (Feb. 22), Japan (March 1) and China (March 9). The critically acclaimed movie currently boasts a stellar 98 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, the best of any title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (that could change by opening day), or the rival DC Extended Universe. The only movies daring to open nationwide opposite Black Panther are Lionsgate and Aardman Animation's family film Early Man, which is tracking to open in the $5 million range, and PureFlix's faith-based pic Samson, which is eying no more than $3 million in its launch.

Based on the cult novel by Charles Willeford, the film comes from the Oscar and BAFTA-nominated producers of 'The Kite Runner,' 'Whiplash' and 'Nightcrawler,' and is being introduced to buyers in Berlin by HanWay Films. Oscar winner Christopher Walken and rising star Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, Steve McQueen’s upcoming Widows) have been cast in The Burnt Orange Heresy, the new neo-noir thriller from Golden Lion-nominated filmmaker Giuseppe Capotondi (The Double Hour). The film – announced by HanWay Films, which is handling international sales in Berlin – is based on a screenplay by Oscar-nominated writer Scott. B. Smith (A Simple Plan) and adapted from the cult novel by Charles Willeford (Miami Blues) about an art world scam that goes horribly wrong. Three-time BAFTA-nominated William Horberg (The Kite Runner, Cold Mountain, The Talented Mr. Ripley) will produce through his Wonderful Films banner alongside Oscar-nominated David Lancaster (Whiplash, Eye in the Sky, Nightcrawler) of Rumble Films and David Zander of MJZ (Spring Breakers). Stephanie Wilcox and Aeysha Walsh, from Rumble Films and MJZ respectively, will executive produce. Set in Italy in 1970, The Burnt Orange Heresy follows the story of irresistibly charismatic art critic James Figueras (yet to be cast), who hooks up with provocative and alluring fellow American, Berenice Hollis (Debicki). He’s a classic anti-hero in the making with a charm that masks his deep ambition, whilst she’s an innocent touring Europe, enjoying the freedom of being whoever she wishes. The new lovers travel to the lavish and opulent Lake Como estate of art collecting lawyer, Cassidy. Their host reveals she’s the patron of Jerome Debney (Walken), the reclusive J.D. Salinger of the art world, and she has a simple request: for James to steal a new Debney masterpiece from the artist’s studio, whatever the cost. As the couple spend time with the legendary Debney they start to realize that nothing about both the artist and their mission is what it seems. But James is a man of deep, lurking ambition and he will do anything, from arson and burglary to murder, to further his career. The Burnt Orange Heresy is in pre-production and will go into production this summer in Italy. UTA independent film group will oversee the US sale. "I started my career falling in love with Miami Blues, another great Willeford novel that I brought to Jonathan Demme and Mike Medavoy at Orion." said Horberg. "Making The Burnt Orange Heresy in Italy with Hanway and this talented group of filmmakers and actors is a dream come true for me, and I hope will bring back some of the magic of the films I loved growing up in the ‘70’s.” Added Lancaster and Wilcox of Rumble Films: “Reading the script for The Burnt Orange Heresy reminded us a lot of reading Nightcrawler for the first time. We love James' obsessive pursuit of fame and legacy within the context of the fickle art world, which mocks his ambition at every turn. Perhaps that says something about us as producers?" HanWay Films md Gabrielle Stewart said: "Giuseppe’s stunning The Double Hour is a very enticing calling card for a project of this class. We are delighted and look forward to be working with industry legends Lancaster and Horberg to set this up as a European production." Walken is represented by ICM, Debicki by CAA in the U.S. and United Management in Australia, and Capotondi by UTA and Anonymous Content.

Steven Spielberg directs the adaptation of the novel. Ready Player One is 1980s nostalgia to the extreme, but the latest trailer gets an assist from something a decade earlier. The trailer is set to a cover of "Pure Imagination," from 1971's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. It's a fitting pairing for a film about entering the all-encompassing video game OASIS and the battle that ensues for control of it. Steven Spielberg directs future-set adaptation of Ernie Cline's novel and follows Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), a teen on a treasure hunt to become master of OASIS following the death of its creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance). But an evil corporation led by Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) is on the trail as well. "This is war, for control of the future," says Sorrento. Warner Bros is opening Ready Player One March 30. https://youtu.be/D_eZxSYRhco

Maisie Williams believes Fox made the right decision to delay New Mutants nearly a year. This year was scheduled to be a landmark year for Fox’s X-Men slate, and possibly its last. Originally, the plan from the studio was to release three films over the course of the year, which would’ve been the first time they’d ever achieved that milestone. Instead of sticking to their dates, Fox made the surprising decision to delay one of the titles. However, instead of pushing Deadpool 2 out of the summer or moving X-Men: Dark Phoenix to early next year, they delayed New Mutants. The move caught many people off guard, as New Mutants‘ already debuted an impressive trailer and was due to hit theaters in April. Now, it won’t be shown on the big screen till February 2019. The delay has come with contrasting reports of what the reshoots will entail, but one of the movie’s stars thinks Fox made the right decision. Collider spoke to Maisie Williams as she promotes the stop motion animated flick Early Man but made sure to ask about her delayed X-Men debut. Unlike those who were upset they’ll have to wait even longer to see the movie, she views the delay as a blessing that could pay off big time once New Mutants hits theaters. Williams says the delay will give filmmakers more time to finalize the visual effects, which will be a good thing: Well, it was always a really quick turn around, and there was always battles of how they were going to manage it. We finished in September and they were going to release in April and there’s – it’s a mutant film, there’s a lot of effects. There’s a lot of work that goes into the movie. They really make the movie after we finish shooting, so there was always kind of a bit nervous, really. I know how long this sort of thing takes on Game of Thrones and I know the work that they want to put in is – it’s a huge job. Actually, I think it’s for the better. I think it’s good that we’ve got more time. We’re not so strapped and up against it. From Williams’ perspective, it is clear why she views the delay as a good thing. As it gives them more time to finish the visual effects or not feel rushed in completing the final edit, it should bode well for the final version of New Mutants that is shown. Those factors and several others will go a long way in determining the overall quality of Boone’s film, and as one of its stars, it is better to wait to have a hit and get it right than rush to hit a release date. There’s also been talk of Fox wanting to reshoot parts of the movie to make it even scarier, but Williams’ makes it sound like the movie is plenty scary already. Well, it was always bizarre to me when we were shooting- when were shooting it was frightening and the scenes that we were doing were supposed to be like PG-13. I was always like are we going to get away with this? It was really scary. I feel like all of the suspense and horror has always been there, it’s just nice to have a little bit more leeway in the editing and make it as scary as it deserves to be. Based on Williams’ experience in filming New Mutants, rumors of Fox wanting to push the horror even more would be surprising. Boone has said that the movie will be the “hardest PG-13 ever made,” and if they were already pushing that boundary, there may not be much wiggle room to make it more terrifying. Instead, there have also been rumors the delay was to make the movie lighter. That may be the way New Mutants is heading, but whatever decision they make, it sounds like Williams has complete faith in the creative team.

Nicolas Cage and Robin Tunney star in Tim Hunter's thriller about a couple who experience strange goings-on at the motel they've recently purchased. Another day, another Nicolas Cage movie. At least that's how it seems in this stage of the actor's career. "Prolific" doesn't quite cut it as a description of Cage's seemingly endless string of films, most of them B-movies. His cinematic output seems well deserving of study, although a single-semester university course would hardly encompass it. At this point, Cage is making two kinds of movies: ones where he's gonzo from the beginning, which is the far more common variety, and others where he's relatively restrained, although almost always with at least one gonzo moment along the way. His latest — and I use the term speculatively, since by the time you read this review, another one may have already opened — is Looking Glass, a thriller directed by Tim Hunter (River's Edge), whose career, like his lead actor's, has seen better days. Similar in certain respects to Gay Talese's controversial non-fiction book The Voyeur's Motel, the story concerns married couple Ray (Cage) and Maggie (Robin Tunney) picking up the pieces of their shattered lives after the accidental death of their young daughter. In an ill-advised attempt at starting over, they purchase the Motor Way Motel, a rundown establishment located in the American Southwest and whose outdoor sign reads "Night Owls Sleep Here." The previous owner has hurriedly departed before the couple arrives, leaving Ray with a lot of unanswered questions. Why, for example, does a regular customer, a big-rig trucker (Ernie Lively), insist on only staying in Room No. 10? Ray soon discovers the motel's distinguishing characteristic, a secret passageway that allows him to peer into one of the rooms via a two-way mirror. He channels his inner voyeur, becoming turned on as he watches a dominatrix ply her trade with a sexy female client. So turned on, in fact, that he makes passionate love to his wife, clearly for the first time in a while. As they experience ecstasy, a woman is being murdered in one of the rooms, and the film cuts back and forth between the two events as though to remind us there's a fine line between sex and violence. More strange things begin happening, including Ray finding a dead pig in the pool, which he inexplicably decides to get rid of by setting fire to the carcass in the desert. This naturally attracts the attention of the local sheriff (Marc Blucas), whose initial friendliness quickly gives way to increasingly tense encounters. After informing Ray that a murdered woman's body had been found in the same pool months earlier, he suddenly asks, "Did you do it?" As the flustered Ray struggles to respond, the sheriff repeats the question over and over, his tone each time more menacing. The plotline diverges into too many confusing tangents for this thriller, scripted by Jerry Rapp and Matthew Wilder, to ever come into focus. Considering its lurid story arc and troubled characters, the film almost feels tamped down as Hunter strives to create an atmosphere of mystery and slow-burning tension. What he delivers instead is tedium, where even the climactic reveal proves both underwhelming and predictable. Cage is admirably restrained throughout (and, to his credit, none the less compelling for it), with the exception of one scene, involving a violent barroom encounter between Ray and a burly bouncer, in which he finally gets to cut loose in a welcome, typically gonzo moment. Tunney shines in her underwritten role, and Blucas entertainingly keeps us guessing about the sheriff's true intentions. But even the actors' fine efforts cannot rescue Looking Glass from terminal murkiness. Production companies: Kirk Shaw Productions, Prettybird, Silver State Production Services Distributor: Momentum Pictures Cast: Nicolas Cage, Robin Tunney, Marc Blucas, Ernie Lively, Jacque Gray, Kassia Conway, Bill Bollender Director: Tim Hunter Screenwriters: Jerry Rapp, Matthew Wilder Producers: Braxton Pope, David M. Wulf Executive producers: Arianne Fraser, Cameron Jones, Kurt Kittleson, Tank Menzies, Jason Miller, Barry Jay Minoff, Ross Otterman, Delphine Perrier Director of photography: Patrick Cady Production designer: Christopher R. DeMuri Editor: Kristi Shimek Composers: Mark Adler, Kristin Gundred Costume designer: Heather Gaither Rated R, 103 minutes

Although China has co-production treaties in place with the U.K., Spain and France, no such formal partnership yet exists with Europe's largest economy. Despite another unfortunate scheduling overlap with Chinese New Year — the most important family holiday in the world's most populous nation — a delegation of Chinese film industry officials will be arriving in the German capital during the Berlin Film Festival later this week to participate in a closed-door meeting with German government figures. The meeting's official purpose is to discuss opportunities for greater collaboration between the two country's film industries, but sources tell THR that the talks will also serve as the first stage of negotiations of a new Germany-China co-production treaty. Although China has co-production treaties in place with the U.K., Spain and France, no such formal partnership yet exists with Germany, Europe's largest economy. Such treaties ensure that jointly produced projects that gain approval under the system are treated as "local content" in both countries, which allows them to by-pass China's film quota system and reap a larger share of box-office revenue. Gaining approval requires that a film includes significant Chinese storytelling elements, but the financial upside can be considerable. The most successful Europe-China collaboration to date is Jean-Jacques Annaud's Wolf Totem (2015), which earned $8.8 million in France and $110.5 million in China. Participating in the talks from the Chinese side will be Miao Xiaotian, chairman of the state-owned China Film Co-Production Corporation, and Jiao Hongfeng, chairman of the government-backed distributor China Film Group. Their German counterparts will include representatives from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, as well as executives in charge of the FFA, Germany's national film funding institution, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and other regional film funds. The talks were set up by Bridging the Dragon, the Berlin-based association that works to forge connections between the European and Chinese film industries. Co-productions between Europe and China indeed are on the rise. In 2015, there were just five, but 2016 and 2017 both saw more than 10 official co-productions. "In recent years, China's film industry has been developing rapidly — we think there is great potential for more film cooperation between Europe and China," Miao told THR in advance of the meeting.

With Internet stability hanging in the balance, router maker maintains radio silence. A fast-moving botnet that turns routers, cameras, and other types of Internet-connected devices into potent tools for theft and destruction has resurfaced again, this time by exploiting a critical vulnerability that gives attackers control over as many as 40,000 routers. Despite the high stakes, there's no indication that the bug will be fixed any time soon, if at all. Satori, as the botnet has been dubbed, quickly made a name for itself in December, when it infected more than 100,000 routers in just 12 hours by exploiting critical vulnerabilities in two models, one made by Huawei and the other by RealTek. Last month, Satori operators released a new version that infected devices used to mine digital coins, a feat that allowed the attackers to mine as much as $3,000 worth of Etherium, based on prices the digital coin was commanding at the time. In recent days, Satori has started infecting routers manufactured by Dasan Networks of South Korea. The number of daily infected routers is about 13,700, with about 82 percent of them located in Vietnam, a researcher from China-based Netlab 360 told Ars. Queries on the Shodan search index of Internet-connected devices show there are a total of more than 40,000 routers made by Dasan. The company has yet to respond to an advisory published in December that documented the code-execution vulnerability Satori is exploiting, making it possible that most or all of the devices will eventually become part of the botnet. "We tried to contact Dasan since October 8, 2017," researchers from vulnerability disclosure service SecuriTeam wrote in the December 6 advisory. "Repeated attempts to establish contact went unanswered. At this time, there is no solution or workaround for this vulnerability." In an email sent Wednesday, Noam Rathaus, CTO of SecuriTeam's parent company Beyond Security, wrote: "We tried to contact Dasan several times since October. By "several times" I mean probably over 10 emails, several phone calls, and requests to both their support and their sales departments. Since we were aware that there may be a possible language barrier, we went as far as having the head of our Korean office send them the full explanation in Korean with an invitation to communicate directly with us to coordinate the disclosure; our Korean office tried to contact them via email and over the phone but, except for a short confirmation that they have received our communication, we never got any updates." Nearly endless supply of vulnerabilities Satori is based on Mirai, the open source Internet of Things malware that powered a series of botnets that delivered record-breaking distributed denial of service attacks in 2016 and debilitated core parts of the Internet for days. Unlike thousands of other Mirai variants, Satori featured a key improvement. Whereas Mirai and its imitators could infect only devices that were secured with easily guessed default passwords, Satori exploited firmware bugs, which often go unpatched, either because of manufacturer negligence or the difficulty device owners face in patching their devices. "The Satori developer is actively updating the malware," Netlab 360 researcher Li Fengpei wrote in an email. "In the future, if Satori makes more headlines, we will not be surprised." Like most IoT malware, Satori infections don't survive a device reboot. That means the December infections of the Huawei and RealTek devices—which Netlab 360 estimates totaled 260,000—are largely gone. The botnet, however, has managed to persist thanks to a nearly endless supply of vulnerabilities in other IoT devices. Besides the infection methods already mentioned, Satori has also managed to spread by exploiting flaws in the GoAhead Web server that's embedded in wireless cameras and other types of IoT devices, researchers from security firm Fortinet reported two weeks ago. Pascal Geenens, a researcher at security firm Radware who reported the new Satori variant on Monday, told Ars it's not entirely clear what the purpose of the botnet is. Last month's variant, mentioned earlier, that infected the Claymore Miner software for generating cryptocurrency may provide a key clue. The variant, Geenens said, is a strong indication that Satori operators want to steal digital coins or computing resources used to generate them. He said both the Claymore and Dasan variants rely on the same command-and-control infrastructure and that the word Satori is included in the binary files of both versions. Piotr Bazydło, a researcher at the NASK Research and Academic Computer Network, told Ars that he believes the new variant may have infected as many as 30,000 routers so far and that Satori developers likely have plans for new attacks in the near future. "I guess they are trying to follow the trend and provide a botnet for cryptocurrency mining/stealing," he wrote in an email. "People should be aware that there may be more variants of Satori in the future, [and] thus other IoT devices may be targeted."

Boffins from two teams now working with Intel have reported advances in a new quantum computing architecture, called spin qubits. While we are still to see full-purpose quantum computers this chip design is different from what is out there because it uses silicon and bog standard computer processes. TU Delft’s Thomas Watson, who wrote the study said that their chip could use standard computer processes. "The hope is that by doing things this way, we can potentially scale up to larger numbers needed to perform useful quantum computing." So far the TU Delft team, called QuTech have successfully tested two "spin qubits." These qubits involve the interaction of two confined electrons in a silicon chip. Each electron has a property called spin, which sort of turns it into a tiny magnet, with two states: "up" and "down." The researchers control the electrons with actual cobalt magnets and microwave pulses. They measure the electron's spins by watching how nearby electric charges react to the trapped electrons' movements. QuTech researchers, now working in partnership with Intel, were able to perform some quantum algorithms, including the well-known Grover search algorithm (basically, they could search through a list of four things). Meanwhile a paper published today in Nature. a team of physicists led by Jason Petta at Princeton reported that they could pair photons, to corresponding electron spins. This just means that distant spin qubits might be able to talk to one another using photons, allowing for larger quantum computers. There are some advantages to these systems. "Present-day semiconductor technology can create these spin qubits, and they would be smaller than the superconducting chips used by IBM. The drawbacks include the fact that it's very difficult to measure the spins of these qubits, and even more difficult to get them to interact.

Britain blamed Russia on Thursday for a cyber-attack last year, publicly pointing the finger at Moscow for spreading a virus which disrupted companies across Europe including UK-based Reckitt Benckiser. The so-called NotPetya attack in June started in Ukraine where it crippled government and business computers before spreading around the world, halting operations at ports, factories and offices. Britain’s foreign ministry said the attack originated from the Russian military. “The decision to publicly attribute this incident underlines the fact that the UK and its allies will not tolerate malicious cyber activity,” the ministry said in a statement. “The attack masqueraded as a criminal enterprise but its purpose was principally to disrupt,” it said. “Primary targets were Ukrainian financial, energy and government sectors. Its indiscriminate design caused it to spread further, affecting other European and Russian business.” Moscow has previously denied being behind the NotPetya attack. Reckitt, a consumer goods maker, as well as Danish shipping company AP Moller-Maersk S/A, were amongst those affected with the total cost of the attack running into hundreds of millions of pounds. British defence minister Gavin Williamson said the attack was part of a new era of warfare and Britain had to be ready to respond. “We must be primed and ready to tackle these stark and intensifying threats,” he said in a statement. Britain has recently become more vocal about the threat posed by Russia at a time when some members of the ruling Conservative Party have expressed concern about the impact of cuts to defence spending. Last November, Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of meddling in elections and planting fake stories in the media.

Esports have descended on the Olympics, bringing professional gamers to South Korea’s first Winter Games, but some athletes warming up for real action on nearby slopes are not impressed. Intel Corp, an Olympics sponsor, wrapped up its esports tournament a few km (miles) from one of the Games venues on Wednesday, three months after the International Olympics Committee (IOC) recognised competitive computer gaming as a sport. Esports, which often pack sports stadiums and attract huge online audiences, are still considered a long way from becoming a formal part of the Olympics, but the IOC is keeping an open mind, to the chagrin of some Olympians. This week, players huddled before screens in a wedding hall in Gangneung, wearing shirts branded with the Olympic rings and competing for a $150,000 prize -- more than most gold medalist Olympians will earn in bonuses from their home nations. Some esports players would like competitive gaming to be included as an Olympic sport, making it eligible for inclusion in the Games one day, a prospect that rankles some Olympians. “They are two totally different worlds,” said Alpine skier and two-time Olympic gold medalist Ted Ligety. “Physical sports belong in the Olympics. I don’t think esports belong in the Olympics,” he said. Ligety acknowledged gaming was popular and here to stay, but drew a distinction between Olympic sports like Alpine skiing, where major injuries are routine and death is a real risk. “The mental side of esports can be tough I‘m guessing for those guys, but the Olympics is where you have to do some sort of a physical exertion.” Michael Payne, a former IOC marketing chief who now runs his own consultancy, said esports should never replace real sports participation even though it is a “great platform for engaging the youth”. “The Olympics has always been about physical action not just mental, and it’s why chess and other intellect games have never been accepted,” he said. One of this week’s esports competitors, Ilyes Satouri, a French national representing Tunisia under the handle “Stephano”, disagrees. “If the athletes saw how we actually compete, how we practice, how much effort we put in our daily routines to get better, I think they could only respect the efforts we put into it,” said Satouri, who was eliminated in the round of 16. Competitors in the esports tournament played StarCraft II, a war game that tests wits and dexterity. Professional players routinely execute more than 300 actions per minute as they build armies and try to outmanoeuvre rivals on a virtual battlefield. It was broadcast live on Amazon’s online Twitch platform and on the IOC-owned Olympic Channel globally, with commentators following the action. Intel is also preparing esports events on the sidelines of the Olympics in 2020 and 2022. The chipmaker is aware of the sensitivities of staging a tournament on the sidelines of the Games, which officially open on Friday, and is monitoring any negative feedback. “There are some people who think it doesn’t have any fit at all,” said John Bonini, Intel’s vice president and general manager for gaming and esports. “I would like to hear more from them. Is that ever going to change? Or are they open minded?” Most esports competitors will leave the Olympics before the flame is lit. They are training for a major event next month at a stadium in Katowice, Poland where more than 170,000 fans are expected to turn up over two weekends of competition. About 46 million viewed the same tournament online last year, more than watch many Olympic events. Sasha Hostyn, who won this week’s tournament for Canada under the handle Scarlett, said esports were not taking away anything from Olympians. “I think it’s a good thing to have diversity so that it gets more people to tune into the Olympics in general,” Hostyn said.

A Canadian news outlet says some of the facts in an expose of sexual misconduct claims against a politician were wrong. Patrick Brown resigned as leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party in January, months before the provincial election. In its original story, CTV reported that a woman met Mr Brown at a bar a decade ago when she was 17 and under the legal drinking age. The broadcaster now says she was not under age at the time. But her allegations remain the same, it added. The woman told the network that Mr Brown picked her up at a bar more than a decade ago, and brought her back to his house with the promise of booze. When they were alone, he exposed himself and asked for oral sex, she said. Mr Brown has denied those allegations and he says he will pursue legal action to defend himself. Mr Brown called the original report "malicious and false" in a Facebook post on Wednesday. Brown also alleges that CTV intentionally left information out of its story that would have contradicted the woman's version of events. Now, CTV says the incident happened a year later. CTV says it "stands by its reporting", and quoted the woman's lawyer who said it's not unusual for "collateral details" to fade over time. In a statement on Wednesday, the network said that attacks on its journalistic practices are "groundless and wrong" and that there reporting on the matter will continue "undeterred".

US Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin improperly accepted Wimbledon tennis tickets and used tax dollars to fund a European trip, a report finds. A report by the agency's inspector general also accused Mr Shulkin's top aide of doctoring an email to justify government-funded travel for his wife. Mr Shulkin has refuted the charges. One US congressman has called for him to resign over "corruption and abuses". Five Trump cabinet officials have faced ethics probes related to travel costs. The Veteran Affairs (VA) administration's internal inspector general, Michael Missal, released a report on Wednesday finding that the secretary had received tickets to the Wimbledon women's final tennis match in July from an organiser for the Invictus Games - a sports tournament for wounded veterans founded by Prince Harry. VA officials had told ethics advisers that the tickets were a gift of a personal friend, and thus allowed under government rules. But the inspector found that Victoria Gosling, an adviser to the Invictus Games, could not recall Mr Shulkin's wife's first name when later asked by investigators. He has also previously told the Washington Post that he had purchased the Wimbledon tickets. Mr Missal also claims that Mr Shulkin's chief of staff doctored an email from an aide coordinating the trip to make it appear as though Mr Shulkin was receiving an award from the Danish government. The email was allegedly doctored by Viveca Wright Simpson, the VA's third-most-senior official, in order to justify using taxpayer money to pay for Mr Shulkin's wife, Merle Bari, to travel to Europe for a nine-day trip. Mrs Shulkin's flight cost $4,300 (£3,100) the report found. US Congressman Mike Coffman called on Mr Shulkin to resign following the report. Mr Missal also claims that a top VA aide made "extensive use of official time" to organise leisure activities for the secretary and his wife, and essentially acted as his "personal travel concierge". "This was time that should have been spent conducting official VA business", the inspector wrote in the 84-page report. "Although the [inspector general's office] cannot determine the value VA gained from the Secretary and his delegation's three and a half days of meetings in Copenhagen and London at a cost of at least $122,334, the investigation revealed serious derelictions by VA personnel," the watchdog found. In a response to the report, dated 12 February, Mr Shulkin said the inspector's finding were "overall and entirely inaccurate". "Your staff's conduct related to this investigation reeks of an agenda," he said. "Your portrayal of this trip is overall and entirely inaccurate." He is the latest Trump official to face allegations of improperly expenses their official travel. Others include: - Tom Price resigned as Health and Human Services secretary in September 2017 amid a row over more than $400,000 in tax dollars spent on charter and luxury flights - Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was criticised by his agency's inspector general for not properly documenting his travel on private planes with his wife - Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin faced an investigation after he was accused of spending more than $800,000 in tax dollars on military aircrafts for leisure purposes - Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is currently being probed for his use of private planes and luxury airliners

YouTube and Instagram face being blocked by Russian internet service providers as a result of a standoff between one of the country's richest businessmen and an opposition leader. Russia's internet censor blacklisted material on both services after a court ruled that it violated billionaire Oleg Deripaska's privacy rights. However, Alexei Navalny has refused to remove the videos and photos, which he claims are evidence of corruption. A Wednesday deadline has been set. If neither Mr Navalny nor the US tech firms involved delete or otherwise block local access to the imagery by the end of the day, then Russia's ISPs will be required to take action themselves. A group representing the industry has indicated that this could result in all local access to the social networks being curtailed since ISPs lack the facility to censor specific posts. "It's impossible for internet providers to block certain pages on Instagram and YouTube," a spokeswoman for the Russian Association for Electronic Communications told the BBC. Mr Navalny is Russia's most prominent opposition leader. But he has been barred from standing against President Putin in next month's election because of a corruption conviction, which he says is politically motivated. Shared video Mr Navalny's Anti-corruption Foundation posted a video to YouTube last Thursday in which he presented footage that allegedly showed Mr Deripaska meeting Russia's deputy prime minister Sergei Prikhodko aboard a yacht. The material was said to have been sourced from a woman's Instagram account, where it had been posted in 2016. Mr Navalny also uploaded a photo of the "secret meeting" alongside a post detailing corruption claims, to his own Instagram account. The next day, Mr Deripaska obtained a court order demanding the removal of 14 Instagram posts and seven YouTube clips. And on Saturday, the government's internet watchdog Roskomnadzor issued the two tech platforms a take-down notice giving them three business days to comply. Google subsequently wrote to Mr Navalny's team saying it might be forced to block the videos. But to date, neither it nor Facebook has censored the material. The two firms have yet to publicly comment on the matter. Facebook is already facing an audit by Roskomnadzor of its compliance with Russian laws, a move that was also announced last week. Human rights Mr Deripaska has threatened to sue those who repeat Mr Navalny's claims. "I want to warn the media against the dissemination of these mendacious accusations," he said in a statement published by the Washington Post last week. "I will severely suppress any attempts to create and disseminate false information flow using all legal measures and will defend my honour and dignity in court." One Moscow-based campaigner said the dispute formed part of a wider effort to censor the net. "In recent years, Russian authorities have stepped-up measures aimed at bringing the internet under greater state control," said Tanya Lokshina from Human Rights Watch. "The government pushed through the parliament a raft of new restrictive laws and is using different pretexts and mechanisms to block critical websites and web pages and silence critical voices online. "Facebook, Google and other major internet companies operating in Russia should carefully assess demands to censor content or share user data and refrain from complying where the underlying law or specific request are inconsistent with international human rights standards."

The president of the European Commission has said claims he wants to create a European "superstate" are "total nonsense". Jean-Claude Juncker said some Britons wrongly saw him as a "stupid, stubborn federalist". He was responding to a speech about Brexit by UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Mr Johnson said the EU wanted to create an "overarching European state" and that integration was deepening. "British politicians, Labour and Tory, have always found that ambition very difficult," Mr Johnson said. "It is hard to make it cohere with our particular traditions of independent parliamentary and legal systems that go back centuries." Asked about the foreign secretary's remarks, Mr Juncker replied: "Some in the British political society are against the truth, pretending that I am a stupid, stubborn federalist, that I am in favour of a European superstate. "I am strictly against a European superstate. We are not the United States of America, we are the European Union, which is a rich body because we have these 27, or 28, nations. "The European Union cannot be built against the European nations, so this is total nonsense." As Boris Johnson spoke, the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was holding a press conference in Brussels, completely by coincidence. He was in typically jolly mood, joking about the drinks EU leaders order at European summits. But the laughing stopped when a British journalist asked him about the foreign secretary's suggestion that there was a plan to build an EU superstate. "Total nonsense," said President Juncker, who complained that the British political class always misrepresents him. But he had just spoken about plans for a bigger EU budget and his dream of a directly-elected president of the EU, which some might say made Boris Johnson's point for him. The foreign secretary's speech has been noted in Brussels - particularly his reference to organic carrots - but negotiators are waiting for the UK to adopt a formal position about its post-Brexit relationship with the European Union.

"When you're on top of the water, and you just see the fin, I think it's more scary because it's the unknown. But when you are underwater and you see the shark it is much less scary. When I saw him for the first time, he was bigger than expected and so much more colourful." This is what a 26-year-old woman, a tourist from England, told researchers after going down in an aluminium cage into the choppy waters off the coast of Bluff, a southern seaport town in New Zealand, to watch the great white shark, the largest predatory fish in the world. Working in what they call one of the five great white shark "hotspots" in the world, two researchers, India-based Raj Aich and his British associate, Soosie Lucas, are studying how cage diving impacts human interaction with the great white shark. Dr Aich, who is from the eastern city of Kolkata and has a degree in psychology, calls himself a "shark anthropologist". Over the past year, the two have interviewed 150 cage divers - the youngest was 12 years old, and the oldest was 70 - from some 20 countries. "Our research shows divers participating in the study return with a positive attitude towards the sharks after a cage dive," Dr Aich says. "This helps them demystify the great white shark." The great white shark has suffered from a crippling image problem ever since the release more than 40 years ago of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, a horror blockbuster about a shark that repeatedly attacks beachgoers in a resort town in the US. "It is as if God created the Devil and gave him jaws," a voice drones in the trailer about the film's subject, the most maligned of the 500-odd species of sharks. It is, the narrator says coldly, a "mindless eating machine" which "lives to kill". Since then generations have grown up with the image of a "man-eater" which glides from the sea floor to the surface, searching for human prey to catch and tear apart with its serrated teeth. Decades after Jaws, scary images and stereotypes about the shark are again being perpetuated in rating-thirsty TV shows. Two years ago, a video of a diver escaping an encounter with a great white that smashed through the bars of a diving cage off the coast of Mexico went viral and provoked scary headlines. So much so that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red list has put the great white on its 'vulnerable' list because of this "typically exaggerated threat to human safety and almost legendary 'Big Fish' status". The species, according to IUCN, is targeted as a source of sports-fishing, hunting (for jaws, teeth and even entire specimens preserved), sporadic human consumption or merely as the piscine whipping-boy of individuals pandering to shark attack paranoia". In real life, the great white shark - the fish can weigh up to two tonnes, grow to lengths of 20ft (6m), reach speeds of 40mph in water and live reasonably long - prefers seals, sea lions, tuna, salmon and small toothed whales as prey. "They are inquisitive, sharp and sentient beings,"Dr Aich says. "Sometimes I go down in the water after baits have been thrown, and the shark doesn't come to the boat. Or she will come for a few seconds and go away. The shark's will to encounter humans is pivotal." The great white shark, according to shark specialist Craig Ferreira, is also "capable of explosive violence, but is absolutely not a blood thirsty and aggressive animal, and its behaviour is centred on not becoming involved in conflict and combat, with combat being the last resort." Shark attacks have gone down over the years: there were 84 cases of unprovoked attacks on humans in 2016, according to the International Shark Attack File. Between 2011-2016, there were 82 such attacks annually. More than half of the unprovoked attacks took place in the Continental north American waters. Only 13 fatalities have been attributed to great white sharks in Western Australia since 1870, according to Leah Gibbs, a senior lecturer in geography at Australia's University of Wollongong. Every day, between December and June, two boats ferry hundreds of tourists who pay NZ$500 ($363;£262) each to climb into cages yoked to boats for a view of the undisputed 'king of the ocean' in 12-degree sea water. Attracted by tuna bait, the sharks swim to the turquoise blue waters where the Tasman Sea and the Southern Ocean meet. When the researchers spoke to cage divers near Bluff, many of them reported a "great white epiphany". 'Calm and peaceful' They found the shark "calm, peaceful and beautiful" to look at. Others found it "inquisitive and curious". "It comes and looks at the cage just to see what is going on," said one tourist. Watching the great white, according to a 60-year-old Canadian man, was a "moving experience, and there was no fear at at all". "People say all scary things about sharks, and as a child you are moulded into certain beliefs. But I felt totally at peace with those animals," he said. "Its a completely different experience for me than that I've seen on TV," a honeymooning American couple told the researchers, "It seems they are much more docile". The jury is out on whether cage diving is a good way to improve interaction between humans and sharks. Ladling tuna bait in the water to attract the fish creates an "unnatural situation, leading to unnatural behaviour by the sharks,", George H Burgess, shark expert at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told me. In New Zealand's Stewart Island, the country's third-largest island and another popular shark diving destination, local fishermen have complained about sharks following and attacking boats. In Jaws, Matt Hooper, a character who plays an oceanographer and shark expert, tells the the chief of police investigating the beach deaths, "There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear." Not quite, as shark divers around the world are beginning to discover.

Australia's deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, was briefly evicted from office last year over a dual citizenship eligibility saga. Now, two months after Mr Joyce's return, a fresh scandal threatens to oust him again. Mr Joyce is facing damaging political questions arising from his relationship - which began as an extramarital affair - with a staffer who once served in his office. The scandal has dominated national attention since a photo of the ex-staffer, Vikki Campion, was featured on the front page of Sydney's Daily Telegraph last Wednesday, showing her pregnant with Mr Joyce's child. Immediately it sparked debate about justifications for publishing the image. In Australia, the private lives of politicians are largely kept out of the public eye. But arguments for the story's public interest quickly emerged. Why is Mr Joyce in political trouble? At first, Mr Joyce, leader of junior coalition party the Nationals, was accused of hypocrisy. One criticism focused on his reasons for opposing same-sex marriage before it was legalised by Australia. During that debate, the conservative politician argued the previous marriage definition had "stood the test of time". However, he also acknowledged that many such unions failed. "I'll acknowledge that I'm currently separated, so that's on the record," he told parliament in December. He also faced criticism that he may have disingenuously represented his family life to voters during his campaign to win a by-election last year. Had he lost, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would no longer have a parliamentary majority. Other revelations, including that Mr Joyce was now living rent-free in a businessman's property, have also drawn criticism; he had recently encouraged Australians to move away from expensive cities. But the greatest worry for Mr Joyce is the intense discussion over whether he has broken any rules. That debate concerns how Ms Campion, a former journalist turned media adviser, came to take up two jobs with his senior colleagues last year. Ms Campion left Mr Joyce's office last April to take up a post with Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matthew Canavan. When Mr Canavan was also caught up in the dual citizenship saga, Ms Campion moved briefly back to Mr Joyce's office, then landed a new job with Nationals MP Damian Drum. Political opponents have questioned whether the unadvertised positions, reported by local media to be well paid, may be evidence that Mr Joyce breached a ministerial code of conduct. Under the code, partners and relatives of ministers cannot be given jobs with other ministers or executive officials without Mr Turnbull's permission - which was not sought for Ms Campion. Both Mr Joyce and Mr Turnbull have denied that Ms Campion was the deputy prime minister's partner at the time of the appointments. The government has said she was "eminently qualified". "It is without a shadow of a doubt that Vikki Campion is my partner now," Mr Joyce said on Tuesday. "But when she worked in my office, she was not my partner. When she worked in Matt Canavan's office, she was not my partner. And Damian Drum was not a minister." In a short press briefing, Mr Joyce also apologised to his estranged wife Natalie Joyce, their four daughters, and Ms Campion, for enduring a "searing personal experience". Last week, Mrs Joyce described the situation as devastating: "For my girls, who are affected by the family breakdown, and for me as a wife of 24 years, who placed my own career on hold to support Barnaby through his political life." She said in a statement that she believed the affair had been "going on for many months and started when [Ms Campion] was a paid employee". Can he continue? Mr Joyce has established prominent profile, and popularity among constituents, during a parliamentary career that began in 2004. As agriculture minister in 2015, Mr Joyce famously gave US actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard an ultimatum to remove their dogs, Pistol and Boo, from Australia, over a breach of quarantine regulations. Mr Joyce explained that Australia had "strict biosecurity requirements for good reasons". Later, when the dogs were removed, he tweeted just two words: "Dogs gone". The unusual saga, like the tweet, in part reflected Mr Joyce's no-nonsense, straight-talking style - traits for which he is well known. But it also promoted effectively the Nationals' core focus on regional issues. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott once described Mr Joyce as the nation's best "retail politician". However, his standing has been diminished in the last week, according to public statements by prominent former Nationals. Mr Joyce's current colleagues appear split over his future. In the end, it may be up to them to decide.

US Olympic snowboarder Shaun White has apologised for calling allegations of sexual harassment against him "gossip". He said he used "a poor choice of words to describe such a sensitive subject", after becoming the first snowboarder to win three Olympic titles. The 31-year-old Californian was accused of sexual harassment by a former member of his band. He denied the claims but settled with Lena Zawaideh last year for an undisclosed amount. After snatching halfpipe gold on Wednesday, Mr White was questioned about the lawsuit by reporters. "Honestly, I'm here to talk about the Olympics, not gossip," he said, before being ushered off stage. Ms Zawaideh was the drummer and only female member of Mr White's band, Bad Things, until she was fired in August 2014. Two years later, she filed a lawsuit against the Olympian saying he "repeatedly sexually harassed her and forced his authoritarian management style on her for over seven years". In the lawsuit, Ms Zawaideh claimed Mr White sent her sexually explicit and graphic images and forced her to watch pornographic videos. The drummer initially sued Mr White for not paying her on time and later filed the sexual harassment claim after she switched lawyers, according to USA Today. She also reportedly accused him of pressuring her to cut her hair and to wear revealing clothes. The two reached a settlement in May 2017 and never went to court. The allegations against Mr White - known as the Flying Tomato because of his red hair - resurfaced ahead of his attendance at the Pyeongchang Winter Games. 'MeToo' and the scale of sexual abuse After he dismissed the claims as "gossip" on Wednesday, his critics took to social media. He later apologised in an interview about the "gossip" comment. "I'm truly sorry that I chose the word 'gossip'," he told NBC News' Today show. "It was a poor choice of words to describe such a sensitive subject in the world today." Mr White said he was a "changed person" and had grown over the years. "I'm proud of who I am today," Mr White said. Many also criticised the snowboarder for "carelessly" dragging the US flag on the ground after his latest gold medal. "I remember being handed the flag. I was trying to put my gloves on and hold the flag and the board," Mr White responded, according to CNN. "Honestly, if there was anything, I definitely didn't mean any disrespect." "I'm very proud to be part of team USA and be an American," he said.

A US teenager stabbed and left for dead on the side of a road used her last breath to implicate her alleged killers, police say. Lizette Andrea Cuesta was found soaked in blood by UPS delivery drivers before dawn on Monday in a California town 50 miles (80km) east of San Francisco. The 19-year-old's injuries were so severe the delivery employees initially thought she was missing an arm. Police used Ms Cuesta's dying account to arrest a couple. Daniel Lee Benjamin Gross, 19, and Melissa Jill Leonardo, 25, appeared in court on Wednesday afternoon to be formally charged with murder. Ms Cuesta had crawled nearly 330ft (100m) so that passing motorists could see her by the hilly roadside near Livermore, say police. Investigators were able to measure the distance by the blood trail she left behind. They said Ms Cuesta had been repeatedly stabbed and thrown from a car. Sgt Ray Kelly, of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, told the San Francisco Chronicle the victim had given police a "compelling account". "Her internal fortitude to stay alive and to fight is pretty remarkable," Sgt Kelly told the Chronicle. "This young woman clung to life when she was left for dead and was able to live for another couple hours and get us that information." Ms Cuesta was airlifted to hospital, where she died a short time later. Investigators believe she willingly got into the car with Mr Gross and Ms Leonardo. Sgt Kelly said the victim was a friend of the couple, who are being held in the Santa Rita Jail. Mr Gross and Ms Leonardo's Facebook pages indicate they are engaged. A "tremendous" amount of evidence was recovered at the couple's home, Sgt Kelly told the Modesto Bee. "The evidence and Lizette's statements to us helped make this investigation unfold very rapidly," he said. He told the Chronicle it was very rare for investigators to obtain a "dying declaration" from a victim. "A dying declaration is a very compelling piece of evidence that's recognised in the court to be very credible and reliable information," he added. Richard Loadholt, one of the four delivery drivers who found Ms Cuesta, told KTXL-TV there was so much blood he could not tell the colour of her hair. "She fought like a soldier," he told the news station. "Like a warrior." She had been living in the nearby city of Tracy with her father, Ray Cuesta, at the time of her death. He told CBS Sacramento he last saw his daughter on Sunday. Mr Cuesta said he was proud the strength she showed even in death. "She was always a fighter, she was always brave, strong, a leader," he said.

A man who lent his flat to two jihadists has been cleared in the first trial over the 2015 Paris attacks. Jawad Bendaoud, 31, was accused of harbouring Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh following the killings. But he repeatedly denied knowing the men were attackers. He was mocked in France for pleading his innocence as he was arrested live on television. The co-ordinated suicide bombing and mass shootings around Paris killed 130 people and wounded hundreds. The Islamic State group said it was behind the attacks on the national stadium, bars and restaurants in the city, as well as the Bataclan concert venue. Prosecutors had been seeking a four-year jail term for Mr Bendaoud, a drug-dealer and small-time criminal, for allegedly harbouring criminals at his flat in Saint Denis, in the north of the French capital. More serious terrorism charges were dropped during the trial, after prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence that he knew the men were attackers. Abaaoud, a Belgian national, is believed to have been the ringleader of the Paris attacks, and was later killed in a police raid on the Saint Denis flat. His accomplice Akrouh blew himself up during the raid. In a video that went viral after the assaults, Mr Bendaoud insisted he was not aware they were wanted by police. "Someone asked me for a favour, I helped them out," he said. In court, Mr Bendaoud gave an eccentric, at times buffoonish performance in court, reports the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris. "I may go one day to hell," he said. "But it won't be for helping terrorists because I did not know they were terrorists." While Mr Bendaoud was acquitted, two other defendants were convicted and sentenced to prison by the court in Paris on Wednesday. Youssef Aitboulahcen, the brother of a woman killed in the police raid on the Saint Denis flat, was told to serve four years in prison for failing to alert authorities about a terror plot. Mr Bendaoud's friend Mohamed Soumah, accused of acting as an intermediary, was also jailed for five years. The only surviving alleged perpetrator of the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, is on trial in Belgium on charges relating to his arrest there in 2016. He is not expected to go on trial in France until 2020 at the earliest.

A domestic worker in Malaysia has died after suspected abuse by her employer, including being made to "sleep outside with the dog," a politician has said. The maid, known only as Adelina, came from Indonesia and worked for a family in Penang. Her employers are accused of not feeding Adelina and allowing her wounds to go untreated. Adelina was rescued on 10 February after a neighbour reported her situation to politician Steven Sim. She was admitted to hospital on Sunday, where she later died. A 36-year-old woman and her brother are now under investigation for suspected murder, police told Malaysian state news agency Bernama. Their 60-year-old mother has also been detained in police custody. "Adelina's death and treatment made Malaysians very angry," Mr Sim told BBC Indonesia. Mr Sim went to the employer's home on Saturday to investigate. "Adelina's condition was weak and she had severe injuries on her hand. She said that for the last month she was forced to sleep outside with her employer's dog, not fed and subjected to persecution," he said. There has been no final conclusion about the cause of Adelina's death, but possible untreated animal bites, malnutrition are amongst the possible causes, according to Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, director of the Protection of Indonesian Citizens and Legal Entities department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is understood Adelina had wounds that had not been treated and had become infected, leading to organ failure in her body. BBC Indonesia contacted Malaysia's Human Resources Ministry about the case but was told a statement would not be issued while the police investigation was underway. Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi said she wanted justice for Adelina. "The Indonesian Consulate General will provide legal assistance to ensure that the victim's rights are fulfilled, particularly the rights to obtain compensation or remedial justice," Ms Marsudi told local news outlet The Star. Malaysia is one of the largest importers of labour in Asia, where migrant workers provide cheap labour. There are approximately 2.5 million Indonesians employed in Malaysia and half of them are working illegally, according to Mr Iqbal. Other domestic workers come from Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Since the end of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2016, there has been no co-operation between Indonesia and Malaysia regarding domestic workers. Mr Iqbal is now calling for the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia to improve the laws protecting domestic workers. "We have already expressed our desire to create a new MoU, but have not received a response from Malaysia yet. We hope this tragedy will act as momentum for Malaysia to push the MoU," said Mr Iqbal. This agreement would also help "employers to ascertain what they pay domestic workers and give them the value they deserve", he added. Glorene Das, director of Tenaganita, a human rights organisation in Kuala Lumpur that handles migrant workers, says the violence is partly because of the term "servants" in Malaysian law. Tenaganita maintains that the main reason that the abuse of domestic workers is so prevalent is the lack of legal protection. The Employment Act 1995 which is meant to protect the rights of domestic workers, does not recognise them as workers but instead defines them as servants. "Many employers feel that they can subject their domestic workers to sustained abuse and torture with impunity, which sometimes end tragically, as in the case of Adelina," Ms Das said in a statement. Tenaganita volunteers also had time to meet Adelina, who was picked up at her employer's house by the police. "Her condition was so severe that she was afraid to tell us what happened to her," said one volunteer. High-profile abuse cases, including deaths, led Indonesia to ban its women from working in Malaysia in 2009 but the ban was lifted three years later after the two countries agreed on better protection. One of the most high profile cases was that of domestic worker Nirmala Bonat in 2004. Ms Bonat said her employer had tortured her with a hot iron. "I have very bad pain, I can not bathe or sleep because the pain is unbearable," said Ms Bonat during the hearing in 2014.

The rebel-held Syrian region of the Eastern Ghouta has received its first aid delivery in almost three months. It comes after weeks of appeals from the United Nations to allow aid deliveries and the evacuation of hundreds of critically ill people. About 400,000 people live in the besieged enclave, east of Damascus, under frequent artillery bombardment. Hundreds have been killed in recent weeks after government forces stepped up attempts to seize the area. Wednesday's aid delivery had enough food and supplies for 7,200 people, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which jointly handled the delivery, said the nine trucks would cover about 1,440 families. The World Health Organisation (WHO), meanwhile, said it had sent 1.8 tonnes of medical supplies - enough for about 10,000 treatments - in the delivery. WHO's representative in Syria, Elizabeth Hoff, told Reuters news agency the supplies included antibiotics, dialysis sessions, insulin, trauma kits, pneumonia treatments and hospital beds. But Wednesday's aid delivery to the Eastern Ghouta was relatively small by UN standards. Jakob Kern, Syria director for the World Food programme, tweeted: "We need much more such convoys." Those comments were echoed later by UN Syrian special envoy Staffan de Mistura, speaking to the UN Security Council, who said: "This is fine. But let's think about it - that is less than 2% [of the population]... we need much more." There has been no movement from the Syrian government on the United Nation's appeal to allow the evacuation of some 700 critically injured and severely ill patients. The UN - backed by the United States - has called for a cessation of hostilities after four days of heavy shelling this month killed more than 200 people in the Eastern Ghouta. But Russia, the Syrian government's main ally, has said the request was "not realistic". Now, Sweden and Kuwait have jointly prepared a draft resolution for the Security Council, to force a ceasefire and guarantee continued humanitarian access and medical evacuations. "The humanitarian situation remains one of the worst the world has seen," the Swedish government said in a statement. "When international law, including humanitarian law, is violated on a daily basis, it is our duty to act." Russia, as one of the council's five permanent members, holds the power of veto on such resolutions. "Gaining support for the resolution will not be easy - but we must try," Sweden said. The Eastern Ghouta has been under siege since 2013. It is a strategically important area, lying on the outskirts of Syria's capital, Damascus - which can be hit by rockets fired by rebels in the nearby enclave. It is completely surrounded by areas of Syrian government control - with the result that any aid delivery requires the approval of government forces. But inside the Eastern Ghouta, the humanitarian situation is rapidly worsening. In December, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that the crisis had hit a "critical point". Then, in January, reports emerged of an alleged chlorine gas attack on the area, alongside claims that hospitals had been deliberately targeted. The Syrian government and its allies deny such claims.

Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has died in South Africa, a senior official in his MDC party has said. Mr Tsvangirai, 65, a former prime minister, had reportedly been suffering from colon cancer. "He died this evening. The family communicated this to me," MDC vice president Elias Mudzuri told Reuters. Mr Tsvangirai's career was marked by a long political struggle against former President Robert Mugabe. He had been beaten and imprisoned numerous times. Announcing Mr Tsvangirai's death, Mr Mudzuri said on Twitter that the MDC had "lost our icon and fighter for democracy". Mr Tsvangirai founded the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) in 2000, repeatedly challenging Mr Mugabe during the ex-president's long grip on power. Brave and charismatic Morgan Tsvangirai was an incredibly brave man who risked his life to stand up to the authoritarian rule of Robert Mugabe. He did not succeed in ousting Mr Mugabe - due to the intimidation of his supporters and some blatant rigging - but he did at least live to see the downfall of his long-time rival. Although he was obviously very sick, he even travelled home from South Africa, where he was being treated, for the occasion. But in purely political terms, Mr Mugabe always managed to get the better of the charismatic former union leader - especially when he was prime minister and they were supposedly sharing power. Some of his ex-comrades in the MDC, which he founded, accused him of dictatorial tendencies and the party split several times. Now, the MDC will have the formidable task of trying to unite and mount a credible challenge to Mr Mugabe's successor Emmerson Mnangagwa in this year's elections. In the 2008 election, Mr Tsvangirai gained the most votes in the first round but not enough to win outright. Before the second round of voting, Mr Mugabe's security forces carried out a campaign of violence against opposition supporters, and Mr Tsvangirai withdrew. Mr Mugabe was declared the winner, but an international outcry over allegations of violence and vote-rigging led to a power sharing agreement in which Mr Tsvangirai would serve as prime minister. Mr Tsvangirai ran against Mr Mugabe again in 2013 but lost by a landslide. The MDC is said to be divided over who should lead it into elections later this year against the governing Zanu-PF party, led by Mr Mugabe's successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

One in every six children are now living in a global conflict zone, a new report by Save the Children claims. Children are at more risk from armed conflict now than at any other time in the last 20 years, the charity says. Its new analysis found more than 357 million children were living in a conflict zone - an increase of 75% from the 200 million of 1995. Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia were ranked as the most dangerous places for children. In general, children in the Middle East were most likely to live in a conflict zone, where two in every five lived within 50km of the site of a battle or other fatal attack. Africa was ranked second, at one in five. Just under half of at-risk children - some 165 million - were classified as living in "high-intensity" conflict zones. Those children are at risk of all six of what the United Nations calls "grave violations": - killing and maiming - recruitment and use of children - sexual violence - abduction - attacks on schools and hospitals - denial of humanitarian access Save the Children used UN and other research data in its report, but criticised "huge gaps" in the scope of data recorded by forces at war with one another. Despite its concerns, it said there was still a 300% increase in the number of children killed and maimed since 2010, according to a record of incidents verified by the UN. Part of the reason for the increase in the number of children living in dangerous areas is due to an "increasing trend" of urban warfare in towns and cities, it said, plus a recent trend of long and complicated armed conflicts. Deliberate humanitarian blockades by extremist groups and long-term sieges in countries such as Yemen and Syria are also to blame. "Siege tactics and starvation tactics are also increasingly being used as a weapon of war against civilians, to try to force an armed group or whole community to surrender," the report says. Attacks on hospitals and schools, it said, have become the "new normal". Save the Children says that despite improved international legal standards to protect children, "increasingly brutal tactics are being utilised" by actors around the world. That includes the use of recruitment child soldiers, and sexual violence against children - which it says is largely unknown because of a reluctance to report sexual abuse. And while the use of some weapons known to have killed and maimed children - such as chemical weapons, landmines and cluster bombs - has reduced, other threats remain. It cited the use of child suicide bombers and the widespread continued use of weapons like barrel bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which kill soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. In addition to the risk of injury or death, children in affected regions often lack basic sanitation, education, and suffer from malnutrition. Last year the group said high levels of Syrian children were suffering from "toxic stress" due to their prolonged exposure to the horrors of war. "Children are suffering things that no child ever should; from sexual violence to being used as suicide bombers," CEO Helle Thorning Schmidt said. "Their homes, schools and playgrounds have become battlefields." "Crimes like this against children are the darkest kind of abuse imaginable, and are a flagrant violation of international law," she added, calling on world leaders to do more. The report, titled The War on Children, is based on research carried out by Save the Children and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), looking at trends in international violence from 1995-2016. Data from 2017 is incomplete, so recent escalations such in places such as Myanmar are not fully reflected. The report was released ahead of the influential Munich Security Conference, which begins on Friday and which the charity says is an opportunity for global leaders to agree on measures to protect children.

A link between highly processed foods and cancer has been suggested by French researchers. They classified foods including cakes, chicken nuggets and mass-produced bread as "ultra-processed". A study of 105,000 people hinted the more of such foods people ate, the greater their risk of cancer. A lot of caution is being expressed about the study, but experts said a healthy diet is best. What counts as ultra-processed - Mass-produced packaged breads and buns - Sweet or savoury packaged snacks including crisps - Chocolate bars and sweets - Sodas and sweetened drinks - Meatballs, poultry and fish nuggets - Instant noodles and soups - Frozen or shelf-life ready meals - Foods made mostly or entirely from sugar, oils and fats Diet is already known to affect the risk of cancer. Being overweight is the biggest preventable cause of the disease after smoking and the World Health Organization says processed meat does slightly increase the risk of cancer. But what about ultra-processed foods? The team - at Universite Sorbonne Paris Cite - used food surveys on two days to work out what people were eating. Those on the study, who were mostly middle-aged women, were followed for an average of five years. The results, in the British Medical Journal, showed that if the proportion of ultra-processed food in the diet increased by 10%, then the number of cancers detected increased by 12%. During the study: - On average, 18% of people's diet was ultra-processed - On average, there were 79 cancers per 10,000 people each year - Upping the proportion of processed food by 10% would lead to nine extra cancers per 10,000 people per year The researchers concluded: "These results suggest that the rapidly increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods may drive an increasing burden of cancer in the next decades." But they said the findings need to "be confirmed by other large-scale" studies and research was needed to establish what could be behind the link. A 'warning signal' This study is far from the definitive take on ultra-processed foods and cancer. It cannot say ultra-processed foods are a cause of cancer. There are also factors that muddy the waters as people who ate a lot of ultra-processed foods had other behaviours that have been linked to cancer. They were much more likely to smoke, were less active, consumed more calories overall and were more likely to be taking the oral contraceptive. While the researchers did adjust their analysis for this they say their impact "cannot be entirely excluded". Prof Linda Bauld, Cancer Research UK's prevention expert, said: "It's already known that eating a lot of these foods can lead to weight gain, and being overweight or obese can also increase your risk of cancer, so it's hard to disentangle the effects of diet and weight." Overall she said the study was a "warning signal to us to have a healthy diet" but people should not worry about eating a bit of processed food "here and there" as long as they were getting plenty of fruit, vegetables and fibre. Dr Ian Johnson, from the Quadram Institute in Norwich, said the study had "identified some rather weak associations". But he criticised the vagueness of the term ultra-processed. He said: "The problem is that the definition of ultra-processed foods they have used is so broad and poorly defined that it is impossible to decide exactly what, if any, causal connections have been observed." For Prof Tom Sanders at King's College London, the definition of ultra-processed foods throws up too many quirks. He said mass-produced bread would be classed as ultra-processed, but a home-made loaf or bread from a posh local bakery would not. He said: "This classification seems arbitrary and based on the premise that food produced industrially has a different nutritional and chemical composition from that produced in the home or by artisans. This is not the case." Even the accompanying commentary in the British Medical Journal warned against jumping to conclusions. Martin Lajous and Adriana Monge from the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, warned "we are a long way from understanding the full implications of food processing for health and well-being". They said the study was simply "an initial insight".