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Even before America's top diplomat Anthony Blinken postponed his visit to Beijing, the US-China relationship was at an all-time low.

Just how low became painfully evident when a day before his departure, an apparent Chinese spy balloon over the state of Montana roiled the tensions he was trying to address.

Eventually, the Chinese foreign ministry claimed the unmanned airship was used for weather research and had blown off course.

The accompanying expression of regret suggested Beijing did not want the incident to mar the secretary of state's visit - the first of its kind in five years.

But the damage was done.

The UN envoy in Jerusalem has warned that surging violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories has brought the situation to "the brink".

In a BBC interview, Tor Wennesland called for "firm" diplomatic intervention to stem the bloodshed.

He also warned of further deterioration due to declining international support for the Palestinian Authority (PA).

"The UN cannot take over this responsibility, we cannot govern Palestine," he said.

In the last month, more than 35 Palestinians and seven Israelis have been killed, following a year of spiralling violence involving near-nightly Israeli military search and arrest raids and a spate of Palestinian attacks.

It comes with the most radically nationalist government in Israel's history now in power, which has declared the principle of "exclusive" Jewish rights to all the land.

An alleged victim in the case against online influencer Andrew Tate appears to have told prosecutors that she was forced to earn a minimum of €10,000 (£9,000) a month on social media platforms, under the threat of physical violence.

The testimony, which appears in a leaked court document seen by the BBC, says "the alleged victim continued working to a strict schedule… staying live on TikTok for 12 hours with only a five-minute break", with the defendants "forcing her to earn a minimum of €10,000 a month and threatening to beat her if she didn't perform her job".

The document also outlines the witness's fear that the group would publish intimate videos and photos of her if she tried to quit, as she says they did in the case of another woman.

China will fully reopen borders with its special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao next week, in what is expected to be a major boost for the economies of the two cities.

From Monday, travelers entering mainland China from Hong Kong or Macao will no longer need to provide proof of negative Covid tests, as long as they have not traveled abroad in the previous week, the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office said in a Friday statement. Daily quotas on the number of travelers will also be scrapped.

Disgraced former pop star Gary Glitter has been freed from prison after serving half his 16-year jail term.

Glitter, 78, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was sentenced in 2015 for attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one of having sex with a girl under 13.

At the time, the judge said it was clear his victims "were all profoundly affected" by the abuse.

Glitter was one of the biggest music stars of the 1970s.

Gadd had been at the height of his fame when he attacked two girls aged 12 and 13 after inviting them backstage to his dressing room.

Without cracking a single textbook, without spending a day in medical school, the co-author of a preprint study correctly answered enough practice questions that it would have passed the real US Medical Licensing Examination.

But the test-taker wasn’t a member of Mensa or a medical savant; it was the artificial intelligence ChatGPT.

The tool, which was created to answer user questions in a conversational manner, has generated so much buzz that doctors and scientists are trying to determine what its limitations are – and what it could do for health and medicine.