Faked footage of Bollywood stars criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urging people to vote for the opposition has been viewed more than half a million times as India goes to the polls.

The rapid spread of the AI-generated clips, in which Aamir Khan and Ranveer Singh "purportedly say Modi failed to keep campaign promises", underlines the potential role that deepfakes could play in India's "mammoth" six-week election, said Reuters – and in other votes around the world.

What did the commentators say?
Indians are highly engaged online. In a country of nearly a billion voters, the number of people with access to the internet is expected to surpass 900 million by 2025, according to Statista. The average Indian spends more than three hours a day on social media, said the Indian Institutes of Management.

But this has opened the country up to mis- and disinformation. In the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report for 2024, India topped the ranking of countries facing the highest risk from disinformation.

Part of the problem is the lack of clear guidelines in India around the use of AI, said Divyendra Singh Jadoun, a former student politician for a group affiliated with the country's opposition Congress Party, who now creates deepfake videos online. Speaking to Bloomberg, he said: "Deepfakes can easily sway the voter, as many are new to the internet, and get duped even by poor-quality ones."

What next?
India is "not unique in lacking regulation", said Bloomberg. "There are few guidelines and legal structures anywhere." And with more than 60 nations and the European Union due to go to the polls this year, "for the first time, potent breakthroughs in generative AI have the power to influence outcomes from Brussels to Delhi, Washington and beyond".

The AI-generated deepfakes now being employed "are the sort of canaries in the coal mine of potentially what's to come in some of these elections", said Ginny Badanes, general manager Microsoft's Democracy Forward.

Recent initiatives aimed at regulating the rapidly evolving technology include non-binding agreements such as the Group of Seven principles on AI and the UK's AI Safety Summit conclusions. Others have taken "more concrete steps", said Bloomberg, with the EU planning mandatory rules and China implementing controls on AI use. But sceptics have argued that these mainly voluntary commitments "don't go far enough".

Mayors are more recognisable than MPs in almost every area that has one, according to new research.

As the 2024 mayoral election campaigns kick off, polling from the Centre For Cities think tank found that around three-quarters of residents were able to name their mayor, compared with 43% who could identify their MP.

While the "mayoral model around England remains a patchwork", said the BBC's political editor Chris Mason, mayors themselves are "currently fashionable". Both the Conservatives and Labour like the idea, so "if you haven't got one yet, that may change before long".

How did the mayor model begin?
Ken Livingstone became the first directly elected mayor in England in 2000, as a result of the Greater London Authority Act 1999.

Mayors who are directly elected to cover combined authorities or combined county authorities are often referred to as metro mayors, because they usually cover metropolitan areas. They are not to be confused with the more historic role of mayors and lord mayors, with their robes and chains. These posts, elected by town, borough or city councils, are largely ceremonial.

How many are there now?
On 2 May, 10 mayors will be elected around England, including for the first time in the North East and in York and North Yorkshire. The model "has gradually become the new normal" in the North, said The Guardian, and the rise carries "game-changing political implications" for levelling up.

What powers do they have?
Mayors are "increasingly powerful figures, with power over transport, skills, the local economy, the environment", Millie Mitchell, from the Institute for Government, told the BBC. Mayors have collective control of £25 billion of public spending, "which is really quite substantial".

For a nation that is "often decried as the most centralised in the Western world", said Sebastian Payne on the i news site, "huge progress has been made in shifting power closer to people".

Metro mayors such as Andy Street in the West Midlands and Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester have become a "rare success story" in Britain's "otherwise lacklustre and inconsistent approach to regional growth", said the Financial Times. And those living in mayoralties support "greater decision-making powers for their mayors".

The country should build on this success by expanding the model. "The experiment is working. Time to double down on it."

The cost-of-living crisis and last summer's poor olive harvests have led to "eye-watering price increases" to olive oil, said The Observer. The cost of an "average bottle has gone up by 89%" – leaving shoppers looking for cheaper alternatives to help keep costs down.

Olive oil's popularity is "partly driven by its health credentials", said the BBC. A "cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet", it is credited with helping to "protect against heart disease and a range of other illnesses".

If health is your primary concern, choose a cooking oil that's unrefined and labelled "virgin", "extra virgin" or "cold-pressed". Or, "when taste is an important element of the dish, you could substitute butter", said Life Hacker. "The end result won't be quite the same", but "it's guaranteed to be delicious".

And if the olive oil taste "isn't a prominent feature" in the recipe, neutral-flavoured alternatives such as rapeseed or sunflower oil are "cheaper and more readily available".

Generally, rapeseed oil is a good olive oil replacement, and it's nutritious too, said the BBC. It's an unsaturated fat, and is high in monounsaturated fat, as well as being "rich in vitamin E, as well as omega 3, 6 and 9 fats, which support brain, heart, and joint function".

If the olive oil is a "finishing element", however, and its taste is key to the dish, said Life Hacker, "it's probably best to splurge on the real deal, and to use it in judicious amounts".

It's only male MPs who take these career-ending risks
Anne Jenkin in The Times
"Looking at by-elections in this parliament caused by career-ending risks", writes Tory peer Anne Jenkin, the "proclivities and foibles differ", but "the sex of the MPs does not". The "toxic mix of stress, booze, testosterone, power and availability" that "leads so many to temptation" is not exclusive to politics, but politics is "dominated" by men. "Not a single woman" has been suspended since the last election, and "candidate selection committees might want to bear that in mind".

The west defends Israel's skies. Not doing the same for Ukraine is a deadly mistake
Nathalie Tocci in The Guardian
I visited Kyiv a day after the West helped to thwart Iran's missile attack on Israel, says Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, and "the contrast between the two emergencies could not be starker". Unlike Israel, Ukraine "lacks sufficient air defences", so why does the West provide "far less than it could or should" to defend against Russia? Along with "fear" of Moscow, the "most tragic reason" is that "Europe does not yet regard Ukraine as part of itself".

With apologies to Lemmy and James Hetfield, here's why I'm giving cremation tattoos the finger
Will Gore for Indy Voices
It's "all very rock and roll" for Metallica's James Hetfield to have his late Motörhead pal Lemmy's ashes infused in a tattoo, writes Will Gore, but "wouldn't a memorial in the garden have done just as nicely?" Turning remains into body art is "just one more gimmick that plays to the commercialisation of dying" and "smacks of an emotional impotence in handling death's reality: a terror of letting go, as if physical separation is somehow a betrayal".