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Food aid is due to stop in January in a country taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Sudan’s war.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says food aid to 1.4 million people in Chad, including newly arrived refugees fleeing violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, will end in January because of a shortage of funds.

Financial constraints and soaring humanitarian needs have already forced the WFP to suspend assistance to internally displaced people and refugees from Nigeria, Central African Republic and Cameroon from December, it said.

From January, those cuts will extend to people in crisis in Chad, the WFP said on Tuesday in a statement.

More than 540,000 refugees have crossed from Sudan into Chad since war erupted seven months ago between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to the International Organization for Migration.

Many have fled from West Darfur, where ethnically driven violence and mass killings erupted again this month in the state capital, el-Geneina, pushing thousands more people to flee.

“It is staggering, but more Darfuris have fled to Chad in the last six months than in the preceding 20 years,” said Pierre Honnorat, WFP’s Chad country director. “We cannot let the world stand and allow our life-saving operations grind to a halt in Chad.”

The WFP said it requires $185m to support people in Chad for the next six months. For months, UN officials have said there is not enough international interest in the crisis and they are underfunded.

“Darfur is rapidly spiraling into a humanitarian calamity. The world cannot allow this to happen. Not again,” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said in June.

A Eurovision winner who has been added to Russia’s wanted list says the Kremlin is lying about her and trying to “scare” her – as she voiced fears for her family’s safety.

Ukrainian singer Susana Jamaladinova – who performs under the name Jamala and won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2016 – is accused by Moscow of spreading false information about the Russian armed forces.

She was charged under a law introduced in 2022, which bans spreading “fake” information about the Russian military and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine, according to the Russian independent news site Mediazona.

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Describing how she felt when she learned of the charges, Ms Jamaladinova told Sky News: “I was upset only because of my relatives.

“I don’t care much about myself because [performing] is my way of using my voice to help my country and tell the truth.

“It’s such a stressful thing for my family, for my parents, kids. I worry about them.”

Ms Jamaladinova, who is of Crimean Tatar descent, won Eurovision with her song 1944 – which Russia unsuccessfully campaigned to have banned from the annual contest.

The title refers to the year that the Soviet Union deported nearly 200,000 Crimean Tatars from Crimea.

Her winning performance came almost exactly two years after Russia annexed Crimea and political turmoil gripped Ukraine in 2014.

In the years since, Ms Jamaladinova has performed 1944 around the world. She pointed out that her travels are very visible on Instagram, should Moscow be trying to track her down.

“Three days ago I was in Washington,” she said.

“Five days ago I was in Paris. You know, you can find all the information about me.”

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Ms Jamaladinova released an album titled Qirim, which means Crimea, earlier this year and told Sky News that authorities may have visited her relatives around that time.

“I heard rumours someone came to my relatives in Crimea and tried to frighten them,” she said.

“[They’re] trying to stop me or scare me… but I strongly believe that as an artist, as a musician, as a songwriter, I can be real and live my life as I want.”

Ms Jamaladinova said recent events had shown that “music can speak and convey the truth”.

“And the truth is the truth,” she added.

“There is no getting away from it.”

Authorities in Brazzaville announced that an unspecified number of other people were also injured in the incident.

Thirty-seven people have died in an overnight stampede during an army recruitment drive in a stadium in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo, authorities said on Tuesday.

Last week, the army in the central African nation also known as Congo-Brazzaville announced it was recruiting 1,500 people aged between 18 and 25.

Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso, who said 37 people had been killed in the “tragedy”, announced that an unspecified number of other people were also injured.

“A crisis unit has been set up under the authority of the prime minister,” a statement added. Other details about the incident are still hazy.

Potential recruits had been directed to go to the Michel d’Ornano Stadium in the heart of Brazzaville.

According to local residents, many people were still in the stadium on Monday night when the stampede began. Some people had tried to force their way through gates, with many being trampled in the scramble, residents said.

Unemployment is rampant in the country of 5.8 million people, where according to the World Bank, “75 percent of the Congolese workforce are employed in the informal sector, either self-employed or in low-productivity jobs”.

In a shock sequence of corporate drama befitting of Succession, Sam Altman – the public face of ChatGPT maker OpenAI – was suddenly forced out.

Not being “consistently candid in his communications” was the charge laid at his feet by the board.

But within days, the 38-year-old was tipped for a return, those who toppled him seemingly harbouring second thoughts after the company president walked out and staff threatened to follow.

Given Mr Altman and OpenAI are at the forefront of the AI revolution, the sense of chaos should concern us all.

Here’s what we know about what’s going on – and what could happen next.

Shock departure

Mr Altman’s sacking was announced on Friday.

Coming just weeks after he’d represented OpenAI at the UK’s AI Safety Summit, and days after appearing at the company’s first conference for third-party developers, the timing was a shock.

The board was said to have “lost confidence” in him due to unspecified communications issues.

In this case, the board means just four people – including OpenAI’s chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who had reportedly become concerned that Altman was prioritising company growth over AI safety.

Board members five and six – who were Mr Altman himself and then-OpenAI president Greg Brockman – opposed the firing but were outvoted.

“I loved my time at OpenAI,” Mr Altman posted on X as the news broke, describing it as “transformative”.

“Will have more to say about what’s next later.”

The immediate fallout

OpenAI made chief technology officer Mira Murati interim CEO.

But as hundreds of staff made their displeasure about Altman’s sacking known, she made attempts to secure his stunning return to stave off the revolt.

“OpenAI is nothing without its people,” many employees wrote together on X – including Ms Murati herself.

Mr Altman was reportedly keen on the idea of returning, with his brother Jack – also a start-up CEO, of HR firm Lattice – warning his detractors they were “betting against the wrong guy”.

But by Sunday, Mr Altman and Mr Brockman had joined OpenAI investor Microsoft to lead an AI research team.

Bloomberg reports the tech giant’s CEO Satya Nadella was “furious” and blindsided about the ousting.

OpenAI responded by hiring Emmett Shear, the former boss of streaming site Twitch, as Mr Altman’s replacement.

But the sense of panic at OpenAI was obvious, as more than 500 employees signed a letter threatening to quit.

Nothing encapsulated the chaos more than Mr Sutskever signing it, saying he “deeply regrets” the board’s decision.

Altman’s next move

Despite joining Microsoft, Mr Altman has left the door open for a return to OpenAI.

The two companies were already closely aligned, with the Windows maker investing $10bn in it earlier this year and using its GPT tech to reinvent its Bing search engine and Office products.

According to tech news website The Verge, citing multiple sources, Mr Altman and Mr Brockman are willing to return to OpenAI if the board members who staged the coup walk away.

That could leave a few seats on the board for Microsoft executives.

Mr Altman has suggested continued involvement with OpenAI in some capacity, posting: “We are all going to work together some way or other, and I’m so excited.”

What happens now?

With Mr Sutskever having changed tact, it would only take one more change of heart on OpenAI’s board to potentially pave the way for Mr Altman and Mr Brockman to return.

But if they don’t, the duo will seemingly continue their work at Microsoft instead – maybe joined by hundreds of old colleagues over the coming weeks.

Either way, Mr Altman’s goal of building artificial general intelligence – which refers to super-powerful AI capable of outperforming humans in a number of tasks – won’t be going anywhere.

Of course, some may wonder if Microsoft – not shy of a major acquisition – could simply buy OpenAI and bring the entire operation under one roof. It already owns a 49% stake.

The company would face major scrutiny from regulators, though, with the US, UK, and EU having all made it work extremely hard for its recent record $69bn purchase of gaming giant Activision Blizzard.

In the weeks before Mr Altman’s sacking, OpenAI had an estimated value of $80bn.

Meanwhile, Mr Shear, the new CEO, has reportedly promised to hire an “independent investigator” to look into what led to Mr Altman’s sacking.

In an internal note, seen by The Verge, he vowed to “dig into the entire process” and “generate a full report”.

The executive, a previously self-professed AI “doomer” who has warned of its existential threat to humanity, has claimed he has not been told why Mr Altman was dismissed.

Why the future of OpenAI matters

The San Francisco-based company has been around since 2015 and even then had some big names on its books, including Elon Musk.

He and Mr Altman were the first people on the board to guide the firm’s quest to develop “safe and beneficial” artificial general intelligence.

But it wasn’t until November 2022 that OpenAI was thrust into mainstream attention thanks to ChatGPT, attracting more than 100 million users in just a few months.

With AI tipped to have a similarly transformative impact on the world as the Industrial Revolution, Mr Altman has been rubbing shoulders with some of the world’s most powerful politicians as he looks to help shape potential regulation.

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Mr Altman hasn’t been shy of warning about the risks of AI, but is undoubtedly committed to pushing the boundaries and, perhaps more significantly to his exit, maximising its commercial potential.

The OpenAI developer conference he appeared at before his sacking was all about empowering third parties to leverage the firm’s GPT tech in their products – even building their own digital assistants.

And in September, the Financial Times reported ex-Apple designer Jony Ive was in talks with OpenAI to build the “iPhone of AI”.

Such projects would go against OpenAI’s non-profit origins. The firm launched a profit-focused arm in 2019, but it didn’t go down well with some of its original investors – including Musk, who quit.

Swapping Mr Altman for Mr Shear, who previously said he’s “in favour of slowing down” AI development, may be a sign OpenAI is about to return to its roots.

One thing that won’t be slowing down any time soon is the drama surrounding Mr Altman’s departure – a saga not even ChatGPT could have written, and one that probably still has a few twists to come.

Transgender women have been banned from international women’s cricket, it has been announced.

The International Cricket Council said its “priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.

It said the new policy was based on protecting the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion.

It means any male-to-female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to take part in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken.

The new gender eligibility regulations were formed after a nine-month consultation, with the final decision taken by the ICC board, which features England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Richard Thompson.

The regulations will be reviewed within two years.

ICC chief executive Geoff Allardice said: “The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and is founded in science and aligned with the core principles developed during the review.

“Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players.”

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The rules only relate to international women’s cricket with gender eligibility domestically left for each national cricket governing body to determine.

The current England and Wales Cricket Board position is that transgender women “should be accepted in the gender with which they identify”.

But there is a “disparity policy” which can be applied when safety concerns are raised about a difference in speed, strength or skill between players.

The new international cricket policy reflects World Athletics’ decision in March to bar competitors who have gone through male puberty from female world ranking events.

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